Coming back to Schoonebeek

For nearly 50 years, Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), a 50:50 joint venture between Shell and ExxonMobil, operated an oilfield near Schoonebeek in the north-east of the Netherlands. It recognised the importance of maintaining the community’s trust. It actively hired local people and local businesses. It worked hard to keep an open line of communication between itself and the community and to act responsibly if any incidents happened. In 1996, when it no longer made economic sense to extract the remaining oil, the field was shut down safely and the area restored, consulting with the local community.

When advances in oil recovery technology made re-opening the field possible in 2003, the relationships it had previously built helped NAM to restart the dialogue with its old neighbours quickly, and to work effectively with local community groups throughout the approval process for the new project. Concerns at community meetings and open days focused on noise and impacts on people’s views of the countryside. So NAM held “noise evenings” at local homes to demonstrate to local inhabitants the actual noise levels the project would produce. It also re-routed a pipeline to move it out of sight by following natural lines in the landscape. As a result it was able to complete the approval process in a reasonable time and start construction on schedule, in late 2008.