Total Closes U.K. North Sea Elgin-Franklin Gas Fields

(Bloomberg) — Total SA, Europe’s third-largest oil company, shut its Elgin-Franklin natural-gas and condensate fields in the U.K. North Sea on Feb. 4 after output failed to meet specifications.

“We’re shutting Elgin-Franklin down,” Jenny Costelloe, a spokeswoman for Total in Aberdeen, Scotland, said today by telephone. “We are trying to maintain condensate production at a limited rate,” she said, without specifying current output.


Gas to be delivered during the rest of this month rose 1.9 percent to 49.25 pence a therm at 4:23 p.m. local time, according to prices from broker ICAP Plc on Bloomberg. That’s $9.65 a million British thermal units. A therm is 100,000 Btus. Brent crude oil for March settlement gained as much as $1 in the hours following the news.

An amine unit, which removes acid from natural gas, will be inspected on the evening of Feb. 7 or on Feb. 8. “It will become clear what the problem is then and we hope to be able to resolve it within a couple of days,” Costelloe said.

The closure of Elgin-Franklin had been delayed by bad weather in the North Sea last week, she added, though production has been reduced since late December.

Bloomberg