Norway Again Delays Partial Restart of Major Gas Field

OSLO, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Norwegian gas system operator Gassco again delayed the partial restart of a natural gas field, reducing gas flows by 20 million cubic metres compared a day longer than previous expectations, it said in a market message on Tuesday.

Output will be down by 54 million cubic metres (mcm) per day on the field until Sept 19 when the reduction will be changed to 34 mcm per day.

Although Gassco did not say which field was involved, market players said it most likely involved Troll, Norway's biggest, and the changed date meant that Statoil needed more time to get back capacity lost earlier this year due to a compressor issue.

Earlier on Tuesday Gassco delayed the partial restart by two days.

The 34 mcm outage is expected to last until Sept 12, 2014.

(Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Terje Solsvik)