Norwegian natural gas pipeline exports looked set to fall back in the latter part of Monday's gas day due to an unplanned outage at the Nyhamna processing plant, Norwegian gas operator Gassco reported Monday afternoon.
The unplanned outage began at 1458 GMT Monday, with Gassco reporting both the length and severity of the outage as "unknown."
Aggregated exit flows from the Norwegian Continental Shelf were running at 346 million cu m/d mid-afternoon Monday, Gassco reported. However, aggregated entry flows were running at 299 million cu m/d at the same time, suggesting a 47 million cu m/d imbalance in entry and exit flows.
The Nyhamna processing plant is the terminal for gas produced from the giant 70 million cu m/d capacity Ormen Lange field, and processes gas for further distribution to both the UK and Continental Europe.
The outage came on the day when the Aasta Hansteen field began operations, with gas from the new field being transported to Nyhamna via the Polared pipeline, however, a Gassco spokesman said that "there is no link between the shutdown at Nyhamna and the start-up of Aasta Hansteen/Polared."
