Environmental accounts: mineral reserves

What does the survey comprise

Purpose

Statistics Netherlands compiles data about the Dutch energy reserves as part of the environmental accounts to monitor changes in the reserves over time.

Description of domain

The scope of the energy reserves covered are natural gas and oil reserves on the Dutch territory, and therefore includes off-shore reserves.

Date/year survey started

Data are available from 1987 onwards.

Frequency

Annually.

Publication strategy

The energy reserves are published annually on StatLine, the electronic database of Statistics Netherlands. In addition, the data are included in the publication Environmental Accounts of the Netherlands.

How is the survey conducted?

Main sources

The main data source used is the annual report by TNO commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs entitled Natural resources and geothermal energy in the Netherlands (formerly Oil and gas in the Netherlands).

Structure of integration framework

The energy reserves data are structured as a stock account which implies that the closing stock of each year needs to be equal to the opening stock of the next year, which allows for a confrontation.

Quality of the results

Sequential comparability

The time series on reserves contains no breaks.

Revisions

The nature of a stock account implies that the reserve estimate for a specific year is the best estimate available at that time given information available at that time. The stock account shows how the reserve estimates change from year to year due to a.o. extraction and re-evaluation of estimates of existing reserves as a result of technical changes (e.g. new technologies) and/or changes in economic conditions (different market circumstances).

Quality strategy

Data on extraction are occasionally confronted with data from the energy balances.