In an interview with the Financieele Dagblad, president-director of Shell Netherlands Marjan van Loon stated that the move would speed up the process of settling damage claims.
Damage
For homeowners in the earthquake zone, where natural gas extraction has been taking place for decades, getting financial compensation for repairs to damage caused by the quakes has taken years due to disagreement about who should ultimately pay up.
Van Loon did not say how much money would be involved in such a buy out, but the Ministry of Economic Affairs estimates that claims handling will cost 3 billion euros up to and through the year 2027. On top of that, around 5.4 billion euros is the expected amount needed to compensate for repairs and structural reinforcement operations.
NAM arbitration cases
The NAM is pursuing two arbitration cases because they do not agree with the State about the damage to be paid. The company does not want to assume all damage because they claim that it cannot be proven that all damage was caused by them.
So far, NAM has paid the costs of the reinforcement operation for the first half of 2020. NAM paid only 60 percent of the costs for the second half of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. This was stated in a letter to parliament from State Secretary for Mining Vijlbrief.
Photo courtesy of the Groninger Internet Courant
