Norway's gas output to remain reduced Monday after plant fire

OSLO: Norwegian gas output will be reduced by 12.7 million cubic metres on Monday after a fire at a gas processing plant over the weekend, and output should return to normal in the early part of the week, energy firm Statoil said on Monday.

Gas output fell early on Saturday after a fire at the Kaarstoe gas plant on Norway's western coast and Statoil, a co-owner of the facility, has been working to resume normal operations.

Monday's outage equals around 5 percent of Norway's exports on a normal winter day.

Norway supplies about 20 percent of Europe's gas needs and state-controlled Statoil is the nation's biggest producer.

Gas production soared in 2012 as Norway managed to take market share away from Russia, and firms have been running their production at capacity.