Categorizing seismic risk for the onshore gas fields in the Netherlands

Risk is a combination of hazard and consequences. The result of the seismic risk analysis is qualitative and gives a relative scoring of the producing gas fields in the Netherlands in terms of risk. In order to obtain more information on the quantitative assessment of the risk, more detailed studies are needed. The Groningen gas field clearly poses a much larger seismic risk than that obtained for the other, smaller gas fields, most of which fall into the lowest risk category. Because of the large difference in risk between the Groningen field and the other smaller gas fields, the guideline of SodM deems it sufficient to carry out a qualitative risk analysis for the other gas fields in the Netherlands, as performed in this paper. Based on the combination of the hazards and consequences, the risk can be further interpreted and, if necessary, appropriate measures can be implemented.