Netherlands officially stops drilling at Groningen's giant gas field

A symbolic ceremony was held on Friday to mark the end of drilling which has increased the seismic risk in the region since it started in the 1960s.

Transcript

00:00 The Netherlands has stopped drilling in what is Europe's largest gas field in Groningen.

00:07 For decades the field has been a major boost to the economy, but the drilling has triggered

00:12 many earthquakes which have damaged thousands of buildings. A symbolic ceremony was held

00:17 on Friday at the same spot where the gas was first discovered in 1959.

00:22 "We have fought for so long to get rid of the cause of the earthquakes. And the cause

00:30 is the gas extraction. And that has now been thrown into the concrete. But there is a rough

00:35 edge around it, because it has not been resolved yet. There are still so many duplicated ones."

00:39 Since 1986, around 1,600 earthquakes have damaged thousands of homes and other buildings.

00:45 The strongest, which hit a village in 2012, had a magnitude of 3.6. Shell and ExxonMobil,

00:51 who run the Groningen field, are now seeking compensation from the Dutch authorities for

00:55 the vast gas reserves left unextracted.

00:58 (whooshing)