Thanks for an interesting and inforamtive post.

Today a historic moment took place. The Dutch government acknowledged in its new energy strategy that Dutch natural gas production has passed its peak (file in Dutch here). Stating that the peak occurred in 2007/2008 and the Netherlands will have become a net importer of natural gas by 2025.

According to BP Statstical Review 2008 Netherlands produced above 81 Bcm/a in 1976 and 1977, and 64 Bcm/a in 2007 behind UK of 72 Bcm/a and Norways approximately 90 Bcm/a.

Would you Rembrandt (or anyone else) care to elaborate a little on these numbers? Are we to belive BP SR 2008?

Netherlands presently uses 37 Bcm/a of natural gas, which suggests a "gentle decline" towards 2025.

It is interesting to note that Netherlands to a larger extent will integrate their foreign and energy policies.

Energy could also become a test of the team spirit within the European Union as other countries search to secure their supplies without a concerted effort from central EU.

@nrgyman2000

Figures in the BP Statistical review are different because the Dutch themselves use a Slochteren (groningen) field equivalent heating value per cubic feet meter of gas. You cannot therefore not compare BP statistics directly with Dutch figures.

Dutch production initially rose to the heights of 81 Bcm/a when production just started in the 70's. Because of market reasons the gas was kept at a production rate near 70 Bcm/a (production could have been
higher). Since that time production has been relatively stable at 70 Bcm/a, with about half going to domestic consumption and the other half going to exports. These export contracts have been signed and exports will continue, therefore your notion of a gentle decline is incorrect. The decline really depends on the large Slochteren field about which not that much information is available in the public domain.

This forecast by the Dutch government is the first official public long term forecast ever by a government in the history of Dutch natural gas.

These export contracts have been signed and exports will continue, therefore your notion of a gentle decline is incorrect.

For net nat gas exports I agree. The export contracts will run untill they expires.

To summarize what you say is that Dutch nat gas importers are pretty much left to guessing on the devlopment on Dutch nat gas exports (except of course those who have contracts and know the shape of their Dutch supply).

If you want an overview of the historical trends for Dutch Nat Gas production or for the North Sea as a whole you can visit the Energy Export Databrowser that was written up in TOD last week. Since then it's been updated with the 2008 BP Statistical Review and includes the ability to look a groups of countries.

It's clear from the first plot below that Nat Gas production for the entire region peaked a few years ago. The second plot provides a visualization of what Rembrandt describes in words above.

In general I think it's better to look at real, historical numbers for production and consumption as opposed to guesstimates of reserves and future production.

First of all thanks for adding good illustrations to this thread.

You wrote;

In general I think it's better to look at real, historical numbers for production and consumption as opposed to guesstimates of reserves and future production.

Your comment illustrates one of the true challenges about trying to understand future supplies, be it NG or oil. Both NG and oil needs good and sound expectations of future supplies as development of energy infrastructure is long term (10 - 15 years). These expectations will be derived form understanding historical performance of individual fields, estimates of remaining recoverable reserves for these and an effort to extrapolate them into the future.

We can of course develop various supply scenarios based on data from authoratitive sources, but still these will only be educated guesses, in other words if we are not fully flying blind, at least we are partly flying blind into the future of energy supplies.