Oil tanker and frigate collide

An oil tanker and a Norwegian navy frigate collided off Norway’s west coast on Thursday, injuring eight people and triggering the shutdown of a North Sea crude export terminal, Norway’s largest gas processing plant and several offshore fields.

The frigate, which recently took part in a major Nato military exercise, was tilting on one side and slowly sinking, live television pictures showed.

The Norwegian military said it was attempting to save the ship.

“The military is leading a salvage operation in co-operation with the Coast Guards,” Norway’s armed forces said.

The Kollsnes gas plant, with a processing capacity of 144.5million cubic metres a day, had also been shut, energy company Equinor said.

It was not clear when it would restart operations.

The plant processes gas from the Troll, Kvitebjoern and Visund fields and sends it to Britain and the rest of Europe.

Gas output from the Troll A platform had been shut, an Equinor spokesperson said.

UK wholesale gas prices were up 6.2% ahead of the incident and increased further afterwards.

Norway is a major supplier of gas to Britain so big outages can affect gas prices.

Flows from Norway to Britain were down by 14-15-million cubic metres due to the outage at Kollsnes.

There was no sign of any leak from the Sola TS oil tanker, although it would return to port for inspection, rescue leader Ben Vikoeren, at the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre for southern Norway, said. –