At the time it was discovered in 1959 it was thought that western Europe was more or less devoid of petroleum. Groningen was so enormous that its discoverers deliberately lowballed its size to stop competitors racing to secure acreage.
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Economist often talk about "Dutch disease" -- when a country becomes so dependent on one commodity export that its currency is pushed waaay up, killing off other trade-exposed industries. The term was coined in reference to Groningen's dramatic effect on the Dutch economy.
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The discovery of such a huge gas deposit on the shores of the North Sea also drew attention to the possibility that more reserves lay beneath those waters.
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One reason that the world came up with a methodology for settling maritime boundary disputes over the 1960-1980 period is that every nation bordering the North Sea wanted to secure a stretch of seabed once they grasped what the Groningen discovery meant.
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A blend of North Sea oils (also from fast-declining fields) is the basis of the Brent crude oil benchmark, the yardstick against which most of the world's oil is priced.
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The other effect was that the Netherlands was flooded with cheap gas, and became essentially a gas-powered country. One common use of that gas was to heat greenhouses for flowers such as tulips. The Netherlands now accounts for about half the world's flower exports.
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So Groningen was a remarkably important gas deposit. In recent years it's apparently been sparking reasonably large earthquakes as depletion has advanced and caused ground movement, so locals probably won't miss it.
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It's still a big deal in the history of petroleum, though. (ends)
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Oh one other thing: The modern Scottish independence movement in large part dates back to arguments about the division of the UK's North Sea petroleum spoils in the 1970s. So if Scotland becomes an independent country some time, you can thank Groningen for that, too.
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Why would I hate Twitter when it allows me to learn things like this? Fantastic thread.
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Aw thanks!
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