The pumping of gas into a north-western German storage facility has been stopped after a deflagration.
The Federal Network Agency on Tuesday evening said it does not expect the incident earlier in the day to have any impact on the secure gas supply in Germany. The facility in the district of Diepholz in the state of Lower Saxony is the largest gas storage facility in Germany.
The storage facility was shut down as a precaution. Experts from the operating company and an employee of the supervisory authority - the State Office for Mining, Energy and Geology (LBEG) - were on site to determine the cause of the deflagration. There are no indications of external influence, said an LBEG spokesman.
Such an incident does not happen often. But: "Where technology is used, something like this can happen," he said.
The deflagration happened at a so-called flare, a safety device that is used, for example, to reduce pressure.
"This is now something like when an emergency exit door no longer opens," the spokesman explained. According to the statement, no one was injured by the deflagration; no effects on the environment were detected.
It is not yet possible to say when gas will be pumped again. "Fortunately, the deflagration happened in a storage phase and not in a delivery phase," the spokesperson said. So no one would be waiting for gas.
