Startenhuizen (Het Hogeland/Loppersum) was hit by a series of quakes on Saturday night
Translated by Thomas Ansell
The onslaught of earthquakes caused by gas extraction in the Province of Groningen continued on Saturday evening with a quake of 2.3 on the Moment Magnitude Scale. As reported by the Groninger Internet Courant.
The main quake struck at about 04:05 in the morning, and four minutes later a second aftershock also hit Startenhuizen, though with a magnitude of 0.9.
Both the quakes woke up and panicked residents in the area, although the series of quakes were less severe than those recorded in Loppersum last week.
The series of quakes in Statenhuizen caps off a week of unrest in the Province, with a large quake in Loppersum on Tuesday (2.7), a smaller one in Loppersum the day after (0.6); a further quake in Hellum on Thursday (1.8), and now the pair of quakes in Startenhuizen on Saturday.
The KNMI confirmed that the quakes were ‘induced’ after years spent pumping natural gas out of the Groninger ground. The Institute also warned that residents in the region will be subjected to quakes for years to come, after decades of (over-)exploitation in the Province.
Recently more political will has been put behind the movement to ‘turn the taps off’, and stop the widescale extraction of gas from Northern Dutch gas fields, which has been going on since around the 1960’s. In recent years the quakes have led to the destruction and re-building of the village of Overschild, a Frisian man living in Groningen going on hunger-strike against the quakes; and the announcement of the winding-down of one gas extraction company, that is jointly owned by the Dutch government, Exxon Mobil, Shell, and others.
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