Shaking Dutch grounds won’t shatter the European gas market

The Netherlands have been a pivotal supplier in Western European natural gas markets in the last decades. Recent analyses show that the Netherlands would play an important role in replacing Russian supplies in Germany and France in case of a Russian export disruption. Lately, however, the Netherlands have suffered from a series of earthquakes that are related to the natural gas production in the major Groningen field. By consequence, natural gas production rates – that are politically mandated in the Netherlands – have been substantially reduced, by almost 45% in 2015 compared to 2013-levels. We implement this reduced production path for the next decades in the Global Gas Model and analyse the geopolitical impacts. We find that the diversification of European natural gas imports allows spreading the replacement of Dutch natural gas over many alternative sources, with diverse pipeline and LNG supplies. There will be hardly any price or demand reduction effect. Even if Russia fails to supply Europe, the additional impact of the lower Dutch production is moderate. Hence, the European consumers need not to worry about the declining Dutch natural gas production and their security of supplies.