Britain's Rough gas storage site to retire offshore platform

(Adds spokesman comments on capacity)

Sept 9 (Reuters) - Rough, Britain's largest natural gas storage site, will retire one of its offshore platforms, operator Centrica Storage Limited said on Friday.

"It is no longer feasible to operate the 47/8A installation," Centrica (Frankfurt: A0DK6K - news) said.

The platform had 6 wells for gas withdrawal, but only four have been in use recently.

Centrica said the decision would still leave Rough with 24 wells available for withdrawal.

"Permanently withdrawing 47/8A from service will have a minimal impact on Rough's capabilities," Centrica said.

Storage capacity would not be affected, a spokesman for the company said: "The full capacity can be injected and withdrawn by the larger 47/3B platform, so the capacity will not be affected."

Centrica confirmed on Friday it expected to have 20 wells available for gas withdrawal at Rough from November 1 as planned as part of maintenance at the site.

Rough is a partially depleted North Sea gas field used for storage since 1985. (Reporting by Swati Verma in Bengaluru and Nerijus Adomaitis in Oslo; editing by Jason Neely)