Danish commercial offshore gas production is expected to be 3 Bcm in 2024, a 4% reduction from last year's forecast, the Danish Energy Agency said Sept. 2.
Danish gas production is set to rebound from 2022 when the country's biggest field Tyra restarts having been taken offline by operator Total in September last year for major redevelopment work.
Gas output from Denmark's remaining offshore fields is expected to be 1.1 Bcm -- or 21,000 b/d of oil equivalent -- in 2020, the agency said, unchanged on last year's forecast.
Because of the closure of Tyra, Denmark has become a net importer of gas from Germany and will retain that status also in 2021.
But with Tyra returning in July 2022, Denmark will become a net exporter of gas to Germany and Sweden once again until "after 2035," the agency said.
Despite Tyra's return, the longer-term gas production forecast has been revised down, "mainly due to a reassessment of gas production in some of the larger fields," it said.
Tyra also produces oil, and the agency said production would be 28% higher in 2024 than in 2020.
This year, oil output is expected at 83,000 b/d, a 4% decline on the forecast for 2020 made last year.
"In 2024, oil production is expected to be higher than in 2020 as a result of the reconstruction of the facilities on the Tyra field," the agency said.
Tyra redevelopment
Tyra is integral to Denmark's upstream gas industry with more than 90% of its gas production processed through the field's facilities.
At its peak in 2005, Danish gas production was running at more than 11.5 Bcm/year, but it had already fallen to less than 4 Bcm/year before Tyra was shut in.
The redeveloped Tyra is expected to deliver approximately 60,000 b/d of oil equivalent, with two-thirds of the production expected to be gas and one-third oil.
That equates to an annual gas production rate of 2 Bcm, according to Platts estimates.
Tyra was operated by Denmark's Maersk Oil before its takeover by Total.
Maersk took the final investment decision for the $3.4 billion redevelopment Tyra at the end of 2017, allowing the field to operate for an additional 25 years.
Tyra had been threatened with permanent closure from 2018 due to poor economics before Maersk and its partners in the operating DUC consortium struck a deal with the Danish government on maintaining the operational life of the field through improved fiscal terms.
