OMV planning work at Pohokura

OMV plans further maintenance at the Pohokura gas field next year, which may reduce production from the offshore portion of the field.

The company, which took over as field operator in December, had already signalled a twoweek shutdown of Pohokura’s onshore processing plant in late March.

It is now planning a proactive inspection of the field’s offshore pipeline ahead of a mandatory recertification of the asset in mid2020.

OMV says that, apart from the March shutdown, production from the field’s three onshore wells should continue throughout the inspection programme.

‘‘It is, however, possible that the inspection may identify remedial action that requires offshore outages in order to undertake the work,’’ the company said on the Gas Industry Company’s website.

‘‘The exact duration and timing of any offshore shutdown periods will remain subject to the final plan meeting regulatory requirements, as well as operational and weatherrelated impacts.’’

Pohokura is the country’s biggest gas field and contributed close to a third of the country’s supplies last year.

Reduced gas supplies — due to a series of planned and unplanned shutdowns at Pohokura and other fields in the past 18 months — have kept average wholesale electricity prices above $100 a megawatthour for most of the past year.

Marchquarter electricity futures prices are also high due to maintenance work planned by Transpower on the highvoltage link across Cook Strait early next year.

That will reduce capacity on the link — which usually delivers power to the North Island — by a third to a half from January through to early February.

On four Saturdays there will be no interisland power transfers.

OMV is the country’s biggest gas producer, having acquired Shell’s stake in Pohokura and the offshore Maui field in December 2018.— BusinessDesk