Norwegian maintenance at gas terminals, fields cancelled over COVID-19 worries

Planned maintenance at various North Sea natural gas exit terminals, fields and processing plants from April to June has been canceled as a result of COVID-19, Gassco told S&P Global Platts Friday.

"I can confirm that these cancellations are linked to the coronavirus. We are monitoring the developments closely and reducing the manning of activities to focus on safety. The gas flows are however running normally and the virus has had no impact on flows for now," Gassco communication manager Lisbet Kallevik said.

In a market transparency update Friday morning, Gassco said works initially planned to take place at exit terminals Emden, Dornum, fields Skarv, Asgard, Kristin and at processing plant Karsto have all been canceled. The maintenance works were expected to be postponed though it was too early to know the date.

"So far, we do not have a date for the new maintenance works," Kallevik said.

The works at Emden were expected to run from April 1 to June 13 in a yearly maintenance expected to cut 9.5 million cu m/d. Two other series of planned maintenance were also due at the terminal during this period each cutting 21.5 million cu m/d.

Annual works at the Dornum exit terminal were planned to cut 41 million cu m/d from the NCS through April 24-25.

The Skarv gas field works planned for April 24-May 14 were canceled with changed availability initially expected to cut 10.5 million cu m/d of the NCS in a yearly maintenance.

Similarly, planned maintenance scheduled at the Karsto gas field was expected to see its flows reduced by 75.6 million cu m/d from April 24 to May 13 and by 86.6 million cu m/d from April 24-25.

Two new maintenance works were however scheduled Friday at the Karsto processing plant, one cutting 9.6 million cu m/d of gas from March 30 to April 1, and the other with an impact of 5.6 million cu m/d from April 1 to June 13.

The Asgard field was due to be reduced by 27 million cu m/d from April 24 to May 17 and by 3 million cu m/d from May 17 to June 1. While the Kristin field had an annual maintenance due to last from April 24 to May 17 which was to cut its output by 16 million cu m/d.

At the same time, the NCS's major swing field, Oseberg, has seen its yearly works starting Friday for three days reduced, limiting its changed availability by 4 million cu m/d, compared with an impact of 10 million cu m/d previously expected.

Aggregated gas exit flows from the Norwegian offshore network were running at a normal 338 million cu m/d Friday to the UK and the continent.

Equinor

Equity shareholder and operator of the impacted fields, Equinor, also said the postponed works were due to the challenging conditions presented by coronavirus, adding that maintenance plans for the Hammerfest LNG plant have also been affected.

"Equinor and partners have decided to postpone the planned Spring turnarounds on six of our operated assets at the NCS; the Asgard A and B, Kristin, Norne and Troll C, and Hammerfest LNG plant," a spokesman for the company said.

"This is due to the demanding COVID-19 situation, and we are reducing non-critical activities at both offshore and onshore facilities, keeping our focus on measures for reducing risk of spreading the virus and maintain safety and operational flexibility. Our production, including gas, is running normally," he said.

The majority of planned maintenance work on the NCS is now scheduled in the third quarter rather than Q2, with any potential reappointment later in summer likely to exacerbate this.

"We will now assess when to put the turnarounds into a new schedule, still it is too early to estimate when this will be," the Equinor spokesman said.

As things stand, a total of 1.7 billion cu m of production capacity will be unavailable in Q2, compared with 3.2 Bcm Thursday. The third quarter will see 2.1 Bcm of impact, Gassco data indicated.