Oslo — The flow of Norwegian gas to northern England via the Langeled pipeline resumed on Friday as repairs were completed following a June 2 outage that triggered renewed concerns over energy security in Europe.
“The ramp-up of the gas transport from the Nyhamna processing plant to the receiving terminal in Easington is ongoing,” Norwegian pipeline system operator Gassco said, referring to facilities at each end of the Langeled pipeline.
Britain’s Easington import terminal received gas from Langeled at a rate of 40.3 million cubic metres (mcm) per day at 1058 GMT, up from zero on Thursday, according to flow data from Britain’s National Gas.
Sunday’s interruption of gas flows from Norway’s onshore Nyhamna plant via Langeled to Easington drove Europe’s benchmark gas price on Monday to 38.56 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), its highest since December.
The outage was caused by a crack in a two-inch pipeline onboard Equinor’s (EQNR.OL), opens new tab offshore Sleipner Riser platform, which acts as a connection between Langeled North and Langeled South.
“The repair work on Sleipner Riser has been completed,” Gassco said in a statement.
Europe’s benchmark gas price stood at 32.90 euros per MWh in early afternoon trade, down 0.8% from the previous day.
Norwegian gas system operator Gassco had said it planned to gradually ramp up flows on Friday.
Nyhamna is able to process up to 79.8 mcm per day at full capacity, while Easington can receive 72.50 mcm/day, according to Gassco data.
Norway in 2022 overtook Russia as Europe’s biggest gas supplier after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, meeting roughly a quarter of the continent’s demand and making any outages at Norwegian fields a possible trigger for higher prices.
*Nora Buli & Terje Solsvik, editing: Stine Jacobsen & Chizu Nomiyama – Reuters
