OSLO (Reuters) -Norway’s Equinor said on Wednesday it was preparing to survey the damage at its Sleipner B gas platform in the North Sea, which was shut late on Monday following a smoke alert in an electrical facility.
Equinor continued on Wednesday to uphold its gas supply commitments to Europe by pumping more from other fields, a company spokesperson said.
The Sleipner B outage is currently expected to last until Oct. 28, although this estimate remained uncertain, Norway’s gas export system operator Gassco separately said.
Two emergency vessels had doused Sleipner B in seawater on Tuesday, pumping it from a distance to cool off the platform, and plans were underway to send workers onboard to survey the situation, Equinor said.
There had not been anyone onboard at the time of the shutdown, as the Sleipner B platform is normally unmanned and operated remotely.
Norway is Europe’s largest supplier of natural gas and a major producer of oil, pumping some 4 million barrels of oil equivalent per day from more than 90 offshore fields, about half of which is gas.
The export capacity of the Sleipner field was reduced by 5.1 million cubic metres of gas per day to 13.0 mcm, while Norway’s overall planned exports for the day stood at 329 mcm, Gassco data showed.
(Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik)
