By Nora Buli
OSLO (Reuters) – Gas production at Norwegian energy firm Equinor’s Aasgard B gas processing platform remains shut and partly evacuated following a fire in a transformer late on Sunday, a company spokesperson said on Monday.
Equinor is now working on getting an overview of the incident and starting the process to restart safe operations, the spokesperson said.
“I have no projection for how long this might take,” he added.
Aasgard B produces 17-20 million cubic metres (mcm) of natural gas, according to the spokesperson,
Output at the field has been cut by 19.8 million cubic metres, Aasgard’s pipeline operator Gassco said in a regulatory filing.
As a precautionary measure, Equinor evacuated 65 of the total 118 people working at Aasgard B, located some 200 km (124.27 miles) offshore in the Norwegian Sea, to nearby installations Aasgard A and Heidrun, Equinor said.
There were no injuries reported, the company spokesperson added.
Norway, Europe’s biggest supplier of natural gas, is still expected on Monday to deliver some 304 million cubic metres of gas via pipelines to Britain and the European Union, according to Gassco.
Sometimes spelled Asgard or Åsgard, the semi-submersible floating Aasgard B platform has processing facilities for gas treatment and stabilisation of oil and condensates.
In addition to Aasgard B, the wider field consists of a production vessel known as Aasgard A and a storage facility known as Aasgard C.
The spokesperson had no information regarding any outage impact on oil and oil condensate output.
(Reporting by Nora Buli and Terje Solsvik; Editing by Rashmi Aich and Louise Heavens)
