Why we are still building new natural gas pipelines

An oft-repeated cry goes like this: ‘We’ve got to get rid of natural gas.’ So a lot of eyebrows are raised when people hear that, even as we speak, Gasunie is laying 50 kilometres of new natural gas transmission pipeline. We’re happy to go into why this is needed.

In the Netherlands, we use two types of natural gas, broadly speaking. Gas is put into these two categories based on the amount of energy it contains. It is either low-calorific, like the gas from the Dutch Groningen field, or high-calorific, like the gas brought in from abroad. Since the 1960s, Groningen gas has been the standard for households, businesses, commercial greenhouses, and some industry in the Netherlands.

Natural gas production from the Groningen field has been cut back more and more in recent years, and it is now ‘on the pilot flame’.

One of the measures aimed at reducing gas extraction in Groningen is the ‘G to H retrofit’. In 2018, the Dutch government decided that nine industrial customers who were using more than 100 million cubic metres of Groningen gas (G-gas) a year should switch to another energy carrier. All companies chose high-calorific gas (H-gas) as an alternative. One company chose to connect immediately to hydrogen in addition to H-gas.

The deadline for the retrofit was challenging for Gasunie and many of the connected companies. The decision was taken in 2018, enshrined in the Dutch Gas Act in mid-2020, and the retrofit had to be complete by 1 October 2022. In particular, new pipelines have to be built for a number of power stations, because the existing Groningen gas pipelines also supply other companies with energy. As a rule, projects like this take as long as two years to prepare and one year to carry out. And during that time the power stations cannot be shut down during the cold winter months. And the Covid-19 crisis certainly made the going tougher. The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy has granted a reprieve to those customers for whom 1 October 2022 was not feasible, so they can switch at a later date, in 2023 or 2024.

The preparations for the construction of 50 kilometres of natural gas pipeline are in full swing. Since it has been determined that the companies have to convert, Gasunie has been busy with the engineering aspects, applying for permits, signing contracts with landowners, and so on. The construction of the pipeline requires amendments to zoning plans, and sometimes those processes can also take a year. For the routes around Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht, construction work has been tendered and is partly underway. The schedule is still tight: the recent ruling on nitrogen by the Dutch Council of State is causing delays on one of the sections. We are looking at how to keep these to a minimum, in consultation with the Ministry.

• 9 industrial customers being switched
• 5 metering and regulating stations built or retrofitted
• 5 gas delevering stations retrofitted
• 50 kilometres of new naturalgas pipelines being laid
• 4.5 kilometres of hydrogen pipeline laid
• 35 underground regulating stations (valve stations) built or retrofitted