Norway's Equinor resumes gas production at Troll A after modifications: spokesperson

Norway's Equinor has resumed gas production from its Troll A platform and plans to ramp up toward full output in the coming days, a company spokesperson said Sept. 20.

All of Troll's 125 million cu m/d of production capacity was taken offline on Aug. 26 for annual maintenance that had originally been expected to end Sept. 7 but which was pushed back numerous times.

"We have carried out planned modifications that will make Troll A more robust in order to maintain continued high gas production," the Equinor spokesperson said.

"Some of this work took longer than planned. We have now started production and will gradually increase toward full production over the next few days."

Troll -- Europe's biggest gas producing field -- is crucial to European gas supply and the extended maintenance caused renewed jitters in the market.

The delayed end to the planned work at Troll also kept a lid on Norwegian gas exports, which continue to run well below capacity.

Flows were nominated Sept. 20 at just 147 million cu m/d as of 1200 GMT, according to grid operator Gassco, well down on a recent export peak of more than 340 million cu m/d at the end of July.

The ongoing issues in Norway -- along with the start of strike action at Chevron's Australian LNG plants Gorgon and Wheatstone -- have seen European gas prices remain elevated in recent days.

Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, assessed the benchmark Dutch TTF month-ahead price on Sept. 19 at Eur37.20/MWh.

Work also continues at a number of other Norwegian gas fields, including Oseberg, Kvitebjorn and Sleipner, according to Gassco data.

The Ormen Lange field, which has a technical capacity of some 25 million cu m/d, was also taken offline for planned maintenance on Sept. 18, with work set to be completed on Oct. 7.

The Dvalin field is also offline until Sept. 26, impacting all of its 9 million cu m/d of capacity.

In addition, the Gina Krog field was taken offline on Sept. 9 for planned work affecting its 9 million cu m/d of capacity. Work is set to be completed on Sept. 22.

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