Natural gas and oil reserves on the Dutch territory; national accounts

The (physical) natural gas and oil reserves consist of (socially responsible and commercially viable) extractable quantities of natural gas and oil found in the Netherlands, plus the amount pending development. Next to the ‘Groningen’ gas field (which, in principle, will be closed in 2024), the Netherlands has the so-called ‘small natural gas and oil fields’ on land (among which also the wells in the Wadden sea) and fields in the North Sea.

The reserves are estimated with the physical data on natural gas and oil reserves that are derived from the annual publication “Natural resources and geothermal energy in the Netherlands” by TNO commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Definitions and data are in accordance with the Petroleum Resource Management System which has been used by TNO since 2013. For reasons of consistency with Dutch environmental accounts and national accounts terminology, we have opted to use reserves rather than resources as used in the TNO report.

The opening stock of the reserves is 1 January and the closing stock is 31 December. Stocks and flows in the Statline table are measured in Sm3. In 2018, there was a substantial downward adjustment of the gas reserves in the Groningen gas field.

The table is part of the environmental accounts. The environmental accounts quantify the relationship between the economy and the environment. To arrive at a consistent statistical description of this relationship, the environmental accounts are in line with the classifications and definitions of the national accounts. As a result, environmental figures from the environmental accounts deviate in a number of cases from the environmental figures elsewhere on the CBS website.

Data available from: 1987

Status of the figures: The figures in this table for the last year are provisional. The figures for the other years are final.

Erratum as of 22 September 2023: An imperfection in the processing had been discovered, causing the final balance of natural gas reserves for the years 2016 to 2022 to be overestimated. This has been corrected so that the figures now correspond again with the data in the TNO annual reports (converted to Sm3).

Changes as of August 31, 2023 The provisional figures for 2022 have been added.

When will new figures be published? New figures are published annually end of August.