The Sture oil terminal in western Norway was shut and evacuated early Nov. 8 after a Maltese oil tanker and a Norwegian military frigate collided in this key North Sea oil port.
Rystad Energy anticipates that 365,000 b/d of oil production will be shut in for several days before the terminal is again ready to receive oil piped from offshore fields in the Norwegian North Sea.
The frigate Helge Ingstad sustained severe damage in the collision, which occurred only about 15 min after the tanker TS Sola, carrying 600,000 bbl of oil, set sail under tow from Equinor’s Sture terminal. The frigate moved to an inshore location and was listing heavily amidst emergency efforts to prevent the vessel from sinking.
The Sture oil terminal, which has 6 million bbl of underground oil storage capacity, is the receiving terminal for Oseberg Blend (105,000 b/d impacted) and Grane Blend (260,000 b/d impacted). The largest contributors to Grane Blend are Grane, Ivar Aasen, and Edvard Grieg oil fields.
Rystad Energy estimates that production from affected fields will be impacted for 5-7 days. The infrastructure at the terminal itself has not been affected and the shut-down appears to be precautionary. Nevertheless, the outage will likely reduce the average production of Oseberg Blend and Grane Blend in November by 85,000 b/d.
Per Magnus Nyvseen, head of analysis at Rystad Energy, expects 2-3 cargoes to be delayed from Sture, causing only a brief upwards impact on Brent prices. “The risk of prolonged shut-down and delayed resumption of operations is deemed to be low, although oil markets will face difficulty replacing Grane heavy oil blend during November,” Nysveen said.
