Norwegian natural gas exports to Europe were curtailed on Monday morning due to an unplanned outage at the Nyhamna gas production plant. The announcement published by pipeline operator Gassco on Sunday evening said that the work could last for an “uncertain duration.”

“There was an incident at the Sleipner Riser platform on Sunday, where we were told they are shutting down,” the head of pipeline system operations at Gassco, Alfred Hansen, told Reuters, also adding that “this looks like it might be somewhat complicated.”

According to data available for Monday morning, gas flows from Norway were cut by 79,8mcm/day which is the total available capacity at Nyhamna. Consequently, the outage had a major impact on the total exit nomination standing at just 251 mcm/day, falling from 300,6 mcm/day on Saturday. 

Gas production in Norway was supposed to ramp up in June following a period of seasonal maintenance. Therefore the announcement made by Gassco took market participants by surprise with the TTF front month rising by 9% in early trading. As expected, carbon prices followed gas upwards on Monday, with EUAs Dec’24  trading  briefly at €76.72, their highest in more than a week. 

According to an update published at 11.14 Romanian time (10.14 CET) by Gassco, the outage will continue at least until June 5, adding further pressure on both gas and carbon prices.  “Any unplanned events or extensions to works have an out-sized impact on the market because of Norway’s pivotal role in securing the fuel for Europe” warns Bloomberg in an article published this morning.