Maintenance Works On Tamar Platform Due This Weekend

Noble Energy, Tamar gas field's operator, will shut down the Tamar platform for 36 hours during the coming weekend (27-28 November) in order to perform routine maintenance works, Noble said.

The Tamar platform started natural gas production in the spring of 2013. According to its operator it has "nearly 100% facility uptime", an exceptional performance for a natural gas platform.

Last August, for the summer period, the platform extracted a record of over 1 billion cubic feet of gas per day (Bcf/d) gross. That performance will be improved when two new compressors are put into operation in the next few weeks. The Tamar consortium has invested over $200 million (USD) in the new compressors.

During the shutdown, the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC) and other private electricity producers will resort to consuming LNG from the FSRU ship which is anchored offshore Israel to a floating LNG terminal. The FSRU is capable of 600 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) delivery rate, about half that of Tamar's delivery rate.

In the interim, power producers will have to resort to using heavy fuels in bi-fuel power generators. About 60% of Israel's electricity is produced using natural gas. However, since the maintenance work will be performed during the weekend when most of the country's industry, commerce and businesses are closed, no power outages are expected.