Renegotiating the non-social license to operate: Natural
gas extraction from goldmine to controversial business
Introduction and aim
Natural gas extraction from the Groningen gas fields in the Netherlands used to be a
non-controversial activity, but became highly contested over the past few years. The Groningen gas field was discovered in 1959, and contains the largest onshore reserve of natural gas in Europe. Extraction from this and close-by fields started in the 1960s. The Dutch national government plays a key role in the natural gas industry and forms a public-private partnership with the Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM) for natural gas production. NAM is a joint-venture by Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil and is the license holder for actual extraction. It is therefore the first point of contact in case of nuisance. In addition to a political mandate to commercially operate the Groningen gas fields, NAM needs approval from local residents and society at large. In this study, we analyse how NAM attempted to maintain its social license.
Literature review
The first earthquake in the area was officially registered in 1986. Earthquakes had already previously been felt, but were not recorded. They do not naturally occur in this region and were already linked to natural gas extraction in 1988, but NAM stated back then that this relation was nonsensical. The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) concluded in 1993 that the earthquakes in the region can be caused by natural gas extraction and NAM subsequently admitted this link. About 1000 minor earthquakes were registered between 1986 and 2012. All changed, however, when the most severe earthquake in the region hitherto, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, occurred in August 2012. Risk and crisis communication became suddenly urgent to maintain the social license to continue operating the Groningen gas fields.
This incident led to a wide media coverage in local, national and international press and the national government commissioned 15 studies across a range of topics on the issue. Previously, the national media had not performed their role as watchdog very prominently and only became active now (Opperhuizen, Schouten and Klein, 2018); probably also triggered by a critical report of the State Supervision of Mines (SodM) and earthquakes occurring more often and being more intense in 2013. Fluctuations in media attention can therefore only partially be related to the actual earthquake hazard. The increased chance in itself does not seem to be decisive in the enormous and rapid media attention shift in 2013. In this study, we relate this finding to the press releases by NAM, Shell, ExxonMobil and the Dutch government related to the earthquakes. Were the risks of natural gas extraction being downplayed in these press releases and by doing so, did they misled the general public? Furthermore, fuelling distrust and protest, NAM must compensate direct damage from natural gas extraction, but had no good track record in doing so. NAM assesses the damage and decides about the reimbursement itself. Dutch society seemed to withdraw its previously issued social license to operate in the Groningen gas fields.
Related to this, NAM and the Dutch government used to perceive the risks as an objective thread and approached risk and crisis communication accordingly in a techno-scientific manner. With the increasing protests, they need to change their tone of voice to conceive risk as a social-cultural experience (Cox and Pezzullo, 2016). NAM and Dutch government are severely distrusted by the public and had to change its in its public relations changed their various communicative and rhetorical practices to take control on the discourse on earthquakes.
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Methodology
We analysed all the press releases from NAM, Shell, ExxonMobil and the Dutch government from 1st
of January 2011 to today (January 2018) related to earthquakes from a discursive analytical perspective (Potter, 1996) and focus on the communicative and rhetorical practices that these organizations employ to control the discourse of risk and earthquakes in an attempt to circumvent public criticism (Buttny, 2009).
Results and conclusions
NAM published 158 press releases relating to the earthquakes on its website and the Dutch government published 193 press releases. Contrary to our expectations, Shell issued only one and ExxonMobil did not issue one single press release on the Dutch earthquakes in the period 2011 – 2018. These 352 were included in our analysis. A first indication of changing frames is that NAM indicated earthquakes that happened before August 2013 as ‘light’, while this word disappeared after the trigger event.
Practical and social implications
This paper helps understanding the discursive strategies that NAM employed to maintain its social license to operate in the Groningen gas fields. Such understanding provides the basis for both recommendations on how to improve these strategies and on how to mitigate them.
Keywords
Natural gas extraction; Controversial industry; crises communication.
