(Adds Kollsnes restart, Skarv outage)
OSLO, April 2 (Reuters) - Norway restarted its biggest gasprocessing plant on Thursday after an unexpected outage butproduction will only be ramped up slowly and will remain down onFriday, gas system operator Gassco said.
Production at Kollsnes on Norway's western coast wasinterrupted late on Wednesday, cutting Norway's gas capacity bya quarter and pushing British gas prices sharply higher.
Despite the restart, output from Norway, which supplies afifth of the European Union's gas needs, will be down by 32million cubic metres on Friday, about a tenth of the capacity,due to the lingering effect of the Kollsnes outage and a freshproblem at BP's Skarv field.
On Thursday, output was down by 87 million cubic metres.
Kollsnes processes gas from some of Norway's biggest fields,including Statoil's Troll. (Reporting by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Pravin Char and DavidEvans)
BP (BP.)
