The flow of Norwegian gas to northern England via the Langeled pipeline resumed on Friday, live data from Britain's system operator National Gas showed following a June 2 outage that triggered renewed concerns over energy security in Europe.
Britain's Easington import terminal received gas from Langeled at a rate of 44.5 million cubic metres (mcm) per day at 0446 GMT, up from zero on Thursday, according to flow data from National Gas.
Sunday's interruption of gas flows from Norway's onshore Nyhamna plant via Langeled to Easington drove Europe's benchmark gas price on Monday to 38.56 euros per megawatt hour (MWh), its highest since December.
The outage was caused by a crack in a two-inch pipeline onboard Equinor's offshore Sleipner Riser platform, which acts as a connection between Langeled North and Langeled South.
The European gas market had not yet begun trading on Friday. The continent's benchmark price closed at 33.18 euros per MWh on Thursday.
Norwegian gas system operator Gassco had said it planned to gradually ramp up flows on Friday.
Norway in 2022 overtook Russia as Europe's biggest gas supplier after Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, meeting roughly a quarter of the continent's demand and making any outages at Norwegian fields a possible trigger for higher prices.
(Reuters - Reporting by Nora Buli and Terje Solsvik, editing by Stine Jacobsen)
