News releases
March 24, 2006 – 14:00
Force Majeure Update on 24 March 2006
In our update notice of 17 March 2006, Centrica Storage Limited (CSL) undertook to report further to our Customers and Market Participants by the end of the week (24 March) as to any material changes in the status of the Rough facility or developments as appropriate.
Offshore construction and recovery is continuing and the operation to replace and repair damaged equipment is underway.
Resumption of normal operations remains dependent on the outcome of the continuing root cause investigation into the failure, any recommendations made by the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) as a result and the repair of damage to other equipment including instrument and electrical cabling.
Our current intention is to make injection capability operational before production. One critical element in restoring injection capability is the replacement of up to 30km of cabling. This work is underway. There are also two cooler units on the injection train which are identical in design to the cooler unit on the production train which failed. These cooler units cannot be bypassed and may be subject to inspection or modification requirements, following the investigation. Our current best estimate of the date of resumption of injection operation is 1st June 2006, although this remains subject to change.
On production, a number of options for recovery have been examined. Our current intention, subject to relevant HSE approvals and detailed design, is to bypass the production cooler units and glycol dehydration units offshore and to run the pipeline to shore wet. This should simplify offshore operations and potentially improve future reliability. It should also enable full production rates to be resumed before the next production season. Our current best estimate is that full production rates will be available at latest from 1st October 2006 although this also remains subject to change.
By the end of next week (31 March 2006) we hope to be in a position to report further on our recovery plans and will provide an updated assessment of the likely period of the outage then.
Bruce Walker
Managing Director
Centrica Storage Limited
