After an outbreak, gas storage at the largest German storage facility in Rehden in Lower Saxony was stopped.
After an outbreak, gas storage at the largest German storage facility in Rehden, in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony, was stopped. The German Federal Grid Agency does not expect Tuesday’s incident to have any impact on safe gas supplies in Germany, it announced in the evening. The warehouse was closed as a precaution.
Experts from the operating company and an employee of the supervisory entity – Cabinet of the State for Mines, Energy and Geology (LBEG) – are on site to determine the cause of the outbreak. There is no evidence of outside influence, an LBEG spokesman said. Such an incident does not happen often. But: “Where the technology is in use, something like this could happen.”
“Emergency exit door no longer opens”
The outbreak took place in a so-called torch. According to the information, it is a safety device that serves, for example, to reduce the pressure. “Now it’s like when an emergency exit door no longer opens,” the spokesman said. No one was hurt by the explosion; no impact on the environment has been identified.
It is not yet possible to say when gas storage will continue. “Fortunately, the outbreak happened in a storage phase and not a delivery phase”, said the spokesperson. So no one would expect to run out of gas.
(apa)