The restart of the redeveloped Tyra gas field offshore Denmark has been delayed by at least several months to the end of 2023 or early 2024 due to supply chain delays from the pandemic, field operator TotalEnergies said on Wednesday.
The project was initially planned to be completed this year and start production in the second quarter of 2023. Now the start-up date has been pushed back to the fourth quarter of 2023 at the earliest as TotalEnergies says now that the restart could only begin in the winter of 2023/2024.
Supply chains and staffing at the Batam yard in Indonesia continued to be affected by the ripple effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2022, TotalEnergies said. At the same time, a number of unexpected challenges in construction and regarding key components have created further delays, said the French supermajor, which leads the consortium at the Tyra gas field redevelopment.
"We take the current energy crisis in Denmark and Europe seriously. Therefore, we are mobilizing significant additional resources offshore so that we can compensate for the delays that have occurred at the shipyard and put Tyra into operation," Martin Rune Pedersen, Country Chair Denmark at TotalEnergies, said in a statement.
The delay of up to nine months means that Denmark will continue to be dependent on natural gas supply from Germany, and consequently from Russia, for longer than it thought it would be.
"Unfortunately, the delay in rebuilding Tyra will prolong our dependence on gas from the European market," Martin Hansen, deputy director of the Danish Energy Agency, told Reuters.
"For a period we will be more exposed in the event of reductions in the gas supply from Germany," he noted.
Further north, Norway approved last month plans for three gas field developments that will further increase production from the Norwegian Continental Shelf in the short to medium term. The move came days after Norway's authorities approved applications from operators to boost production from several operating gas fields.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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