German gas storage facility down until Friday after unexplained deflagration

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany’s largest gas storage facility in Rehden has been taken out of operation until Friday at 1700 GMT for safety reasons after a deflagration, storage company Astora said.

The incident does not affect the security of supply, the company said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that it is working with authorities to establish what caused the incident.

Rehden in northern Germany had been 90.3% full before the incident, the website of Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) showed.

A company spokesperson for Astora said the market would be informed as soon as further details were available.

There was not fixed timing of further notifications for the time being, she said.

A statement by the Lower Saxony state mining authority LBEG, which supervises activities of storage operations, on Tuesday said that the incident had happened at 0930 GMT on Tuesday.

A team of experts including LBEG was looking into the event.

(Writing by Rachel More and Miranda Murray; additional reporting by Vera Eckert, editing by Matthias Williams)

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