The Nederlandse Aardoliemaatschappij (NAM) has discovered a major new natural gas reserve in the north-east of Friesland, the oil and gas company said on Monday, news agency ANP reports.

The reserve is thought to contain some four billion cubic metres of gas at a dept of 3.9 kilometres underground. Four billion cubic metres is equivalent to the annual usage of 2.5 million households.
NAM hopes to start extracting the gas in the summer. The field, close to the village of Ee, has been named Metslawier-zuid and is sandwiched between two other major reserves.
New techniques
‘The find surpasses our expectations,’ director Bart van de Leemput is quoted as saying. New techniques make it possible to extract more gas and to exploit smaller gas fields to the full, Van de Leemput said.
Despite being the biggest find since 1995, the Mestlawier-zuid field is nowhere near the size of the massive Slochteren gas field. It was discovered in 1959 and in 2009 had reserves estimated at 2,700 billion cubic metres.
The Nederlandse Aardoliemaatschappij was set up in 1947 to explore for gas and oil in the Netherlands and the Dutch section of the Continental Shelf. The company, now owned 50/50 by Shell and ExxonMobil, produces 75% of all gas extracted on Dutch territory and around half the oil.