BP's Skarv gas outage to last at least until mid-Feb

OSLO, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Gas production capacity at BP's Skarv field offshore Norway is likely to remain reduced by 40 percent until mid-February due to an ongoing outage, a spokesman said on Tuesday.

The floating production, storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) has a capacity to produce 19 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas and 85,000 barrels of oil per day at the field.

Gas production from Skarv in the Norwegian Sea has been restricted since November last year due to a short-circuit in a high-voltage transformer shutting one of the two gas export trains.

A new transformer has been delivered to Norway, but it was unclear when the installation can take place as this was dependent on weather, BP's spokesman in Norway Jan Erik Geirmo said.

"The weather in the winter period has proven very unstable and we need very calm sea for safe operations. The earliest possibility (to install the new transformer) will be close to mid-February provided the weather is fine," he told Reuters in an email.

"Oil production is running close to maximum," he added.

BP has previously said that oil production would be prioritised while gas output remains restricted.

BP has a 23.84 per cent interest in the production license, while Norway's Statoil (Xetra: 675213 - news) holds 36.17 per cent, Germany's E.ON 28.08 per cent and Poland's PGNiG 11.92 per cent. (Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)