The official inauguration of Statoil's Kårstø processing plant and the Åsgard gas transport system takes place today, 11 January.
Kårstø, north of Stavanger, is Europe's largest natural gas treatment complex and it will export energy amounting to 221 terawatt-hours this year. By way of comparison, total power production in Norway last year was 141.8 terawatt-hours.
"New resources from the Halten Bank contribute to increasing value creation from Norwegian gas and make the Kårstø treatment plant Europe's most important supplier of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)," says Leidulf Ramstad, senior vice president of the Kårstø facilities. LPG contains propane and butane.
Norwegian gas deliveries to Europe will reach a plateau in 2005, with about 70 billion cubic metres exported annually. Roughly 15 per cent of this amount will come from the Åsgard field in the Norwegian Sea.
Gas from Åsgard is transported through a 707-kilometre-long trunkline to Kårstø, where the gas flow is fractionated into separate components. A new product from Kårstø is ethane, which is used in the petrochemicals industry to produce plastic.