Hearings of the Groningen gas mine investigation committee start with victims

Residents of Groningen have been living in uncertainty in the earthquake area for decades. Thousands of residents whose homes have been damaged are under the stress of treatment and adjustment of the damage. The public hearings of the gas extraction inquiry committee of the parliament in Groningen will start next Monday.

How did we get here? In order to answer this question, the House decided to open a parliamentary inquiry in 2019. This is the most serious tool that Parliament has at its disposal to fulfill its oversight role.

After months of behind-closed-door investigations, the public hearings of the gas extraction inquiry committee of the House of Representatives in Groningen will start next Monday. During the first week, twelve witnesses will tell about “the nature, seriousness, scope and persistence of the problems in Groningen”.

The research covers the period from 1959 (when the Groningen gas field was discovered) to 2021. A total of seventy people will be interviewed.

The purpose of the first week of interrogations is to demonstrate the “urgency” of the problem. Victims have their say from day one, together with scientists, directors of NAM and Shell, civil servants and a former minister who previously conducted research into the relationship between gas extraction and earthquakes in the 1990s. These twelve questions should give a general picture of the problems.

The hearings will then run from late August to mid-October. These questions will be discussed in more detail in these conversations.

“It’s Time to Reveal the Truth”

Committee members want to know how the decision-making process on gas extraction takes place, how damage assessments and amplification takes place in critical times, what effects this has, what interests and views play a role and what role the interests of the parties play. The Groningers have all had to deal with that.

“It is time to uncover the truth about this important and complex gas file,” said Tom van der Lee, MP and committee chair.

In recent months, the Commission of Inquiry has received more than 600,000 documents from 47 organizations such as ministries, oil companies and information institutions.

Deputies also visited 35 residents, farmers and entrepreneurs in the earthquake area to hear their stories. “It’s hard to understand what it means to no longer feel at home or be safe,” says Van der Lee.

In preparation for public interrogations, 124 private preliminary interviews were held with persons who participated in gas extraction, damage assessment and reinforcement operations.

The House of Representatives has voted ten times in the past thirty years

The House of Representatives has conducted parliamentary inquiries ten times in the past three decades. The last major investigation was on the Fyra rail link, which never materialized.

Research results are often overwhelming. In 2015, Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilma Mansveld (Infrastructure and the Environment) resigned because of the Fyra debacle. At the beginning of January 2021, the cabinet of Rutte III resigned after hard observation unprecedented injustice about childcare allowance. Because of his current role as Minister of Finance, Minister Eric Wiebes did not return to the then retiring cabinet.