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Shell's Corrib Outage Keeps Rolling

By: 
Mark Smedley - Natural Gas World

An outage at the Corrib offshore gas field, which produces all of the Republic of Ireland's indigenous natural gas, has been extended again. The country is able to source alternative supplies from and via Britain.

Regulatory (Remit) notices filed by Statoil, one of the partners in Corrib, show a reduced availability from the field of 9.9mn m3/d until October 5 at 6am Norwegian time. This equates to the field's entire production capacity of 3.6bn m3/yr, showing the field is shut in.

Statoil did not indicate the reason for the outage. It told NGW that all questions should be referred to "Shell who are still operator; upon completion of the transaction [Canada's] Vermillion Energy will become the new operator." 

Shell too declined to tell NGW the reason for the outage. “We are continuing to collaborate with [onshore gas grid operator] Gas Networks Ireland and the regulators and don’t comment on production timelines,” a spokesperson added.

The outage began September 21 and successive notices published on Statoil's Remit pages indicated that the field would resume output in two days' time, the most recent of which published October 3.

In July, Shell announced the planned sale of its 45% stake in the Corrib gas field for up to $1.23bn to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). 

Ireland is able to replace missing Corrib production by increasing up imports of UK and Norwegian gas via three pipelines linking Scotland to the island of Ireland (two to the Irish Republic, one to the UK's Northern Ireland). 

Irish gas system, showing Corrib offshore northwest Ireland. Kinsale Head gasfield is a storage facility only (Map source: Gas Networks Ireland)

 

Posted Date: 
3 October 2017