At approximately 12:20hrs today, the North Mole Power Station experienced an interruption to its gas supply from the Shell LNG terminal, thus resulting in two of the four engines that were operational at the time shutting down, the other two continued running on back-up fuel. As a consequence, several areas suffered a power outage.

When the process of restoration of power was underway the GEA experienced a further problem with temporary fuel starvation on the diesel line to the remaining engines, which subsequently resulted in further interruption to most of its consumers. The GEA restarted all its other available generating capacity and re-commenced the process of restoring power at about 13:05hrs, completing it by 13:25hrs.

The LNG (natural gas) supply to the power station has now been reinstated.

Shell will be providing the GEA with a full report as to the cause of their fault and measures will be taken to ensure the same fault does not re-occur.