The Sable Offshore Energy Project has had to shut downproduction twice since starting operations Jan. 1. The firstincident occurred on Friday, Jan. 7, only a week after gas began toflow, when a sub-sea line started experiencing hydrate problems(essentially ice slug blockage). Then early last week the Sableprocessing plant onshore had to be evacuated because of a gas leakwarning. As of last Friday there was no prognosis on whenproduction would be restarted.

The Canada Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board said last weekit will begin providing weekly updates on the offshore project anddaily updates when outages occur. Information is available on theboard’s web site: https://www.cnsopb.ns.ca/ The National EnergyBoard has jurisdiction over the onshore facilities.

Initial production from Sable was averaging 110 MMcf/d, about 36MMcf/d of which was making its way into U.S. markets via theMaritimes project. Sable producers still expect flows to ramp up to440 MMcf/d quickly. About 360 MMcf/d is expected to be traveling tothe U.S. by mid-February. The Sable project is expected to reachpeak flow of 530 MMcf/d after Nova Scotia and New Brunswicklaterals are put in place in November.

Production will be flowing from six wells at the North Atlanticproject’s Thebaud, Venture and North Triumph fields. The fields are125 miles (200 km) east of Nova Scotia. Sable’s various partsinclude three offshore processing platforms, two onshore processingplants as well as sub-sea pipelines. Sable partners include ExxonMobil with 50.8%, Shell Canada Ltd. with 31.3%, Exxon Mobilaffiliate Imperial Oil Ltd. with 9%, Nova Scotia Resources Ltd.with 8.4%, and Mosbacher Operating Ltd. with 0.05%.

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