With repairs ongoing, TotalEnergies anticipates full technical capacity at North Sea gas project later this year

TotalEnergies EP Danmark, a subsidiary of France’s energy giant TotalEnergies, is working on fixing an issue that has sprung up at its recently restarted natural gas redevelopment project in the Danish sector of the North Sea. Based on the ongoing investigation, the ramp-up to full technical capacity is expected in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Following the restart of gas production from Tyra II, which is said to be Denmark’s largest natural gas field, the export of gas from the Tyra facilities to Denmark was ongoing during the ramp-up period, when TotalEnergies, on behalf of its partners in the Danish Underground Consortium (DUC), disclosed that an operational occurrence was temporarily impacting the commissioning of the facilities during the ramp-up and testing period. DUC is a partnership between TotalEnergies EP Danmark (operator, 43.2%), BlueNord (36.8%), and Nordsøfonden (20%).

While the commissioning of the Tyra II facilities and the ongoing investigation into the current operational occurrence with the intermediate pressure (IP) gas compressor station continues, the company underlines that the findings so far indicate that the commissioning and further ramp-up of the export and production from the new Tyra II facilities will most likely continue into the fourth quarter of 2024. ​

​The firm claims that export volumes to the Danish gas market will be affected due to the necessary operational changes in the commissioning and testing program during the first phase of the mitigation plan, which has been initiated. The investigation has confirmed that the technical issue relates to the transformer delivering power to the IP gas compressor.

As TotalEnergies has concluded that the transformer for the IP gas compressor needs to be repaired, the repair work is ongoing and a dedicated team is in parallel developing options to partially resume gas export from Tyra II as soon as possible. According to BlueNord, the commissioning of the Tyra II facilities, including the reinstatement of satellite fields and wells, is progressing well.

“Several ongoing actions are being taken to mitigate the current issue and whilst these remediation steps are ongoing, the efforts in respect of testing and commissioning continue with the aim to partially resume production from Tyra II during the summer of 2024,” explained TotalEnergies.

Furthermore, the company expects minimal residual export volumes to occasionally flow through the Tyra hub for the commissioning and entering the export system during May and June. If the preliminary investigation findings are confirmed, the operator anticipates the restart of gas export from Tyra II in July and an increase in the volumes exported through 3Q 2024, reaching full technical capacity in 4Q 2024.

TotalEnergies highlighted: “As the objective remains to safely and efficiently resume production from Tyra II whilst ensuring minimal environmental impact, there will from time to time be minimal residual export volumes associated with the commissioning works, which will flow to Denmark.

“These volumes are residual flows from the commissioning, where small volumes of natural gas from the Dan hub flow through Tyra II for commissioning and onwards to the export system. These volumes do not reflect the available capacity or production volumes.”

​After the gas flow from Harald, Svend, Roar, and Valdemar, and the wells from the Tyra field, including Southeast, West, and East, is re-established, the North Sea gas project is expected to deliver 2.8 billion cubic meters of gas per year, amounting to 80% of the forecasted Danish gas production.

The redeveloped Tyra hub extends the Danish field’s life by 25 years and is anticipated to produce 5.7 million cubic meters of gas and 22,000 barrels of condensate per day at a plateau.