Algeria’s Skikda liquified natural gas (LNG) export plant has come back on stream following a two-month shutdown for maintenance, LNG World News reported.

Maintenance work at the 4.7mt/y facility has been completed and the first cargoes shipped out in late September, according to S&P Global Platts.  A second cargo loaded from Skikda aboard the Cheikh el Mokrani is taking 45mcm of gas equivalent to the Sagunto terminal in Spain and is expected to arrive by the end of September. The two-month shutdown was partly to blame for a slump in exports of LNG to Spain in August, while Spanish gas demand was also lower.

The Skikda plant has been a steady supplier of LNG to Spain, supplying close to 2bcm of gas equivalent to the Spanish market since September 2015, covering almost 15% of Spain’s total LNG imports. Algeria’s other LNG export facility at Arzew supplied some 1.4bcm of gas equivalent to Spain in the same period.

Although Algeria’s LNG exports dipped in August due to the Skikda outage, the country has been running at five-year highs in the month before the shutdown and exports during 2016 are on a level with volumes sold in 2015.