On Sunday 2 June, a shutdown of the offshore Sleipner hub halted operations at Norway’s Nyhamna onshore processing plant.

Pipeline operator Gassco reported that the outage was caused by the discovery of a crack in a two-inch pipeline onboard the offshore Sleipner Riser platform. Sleipner Riser is a connection point for the Langeled North and Langeled South pipelines connecting the Nyhamna plant on Norway’s west coast with the Easington terminal in northeast England.

With both terminals shut on Monday, Norwegian gas supply nominations fell to 256 million cubic metres (mcm) per day, from 300 mcm/day measured on Friday. The result was an increase in European gas prices to 37.08 euros/MWh, their highest level this year. (Source: Dutch TTF Gas – European benchmark.)

By 8 June prices had eased somewhat – though concerns linger.

In 2022, Norway overtook Russia as Europe’s biggest gas supplier after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine severed decades-long energy ties.