The gas treatment and compression facilities are being designed as a zero-emissions plant.
[3] Commercial operations will start due to resistance of local city councils in 2014 at the earliest.
[6] A number of scientific reports[7][8] however show that gas storage might bring about serious seismic hazard to the surrounding municipalities of Bergen, Heiloo and Schermer and the town of Alkmaar.
The area has known a number of (man) induced earthquakes during the depletion of the field between 1994 and 2008, with subsequent higher magnitudes on the Richter scale.
Scientists from a number of renowned scientific institutes such as KNMI, MIT[8] and TNO are comfortable with an estimated maximum magnitude of 3.9 on the Richter scale, with a chance of occurrence of 2% over the concession period.