LNG

Equinor, the Norwegian energy major, LNG plant owner and pipeline natural gas supplier to Europe, is increasing gas output on the Norwegian Continental Shelf with a gas field joint venture.

Equinor of Norway, the main supplier of pipeline natural gas to Europe and an LNG exporter, has been awarded two more licences for carbon-dioxide storage facilities on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

Norwegian major Equinor and its partners in the Snøhvit Future project and Hammerfest LNG have awarded a construction and installation contract to domestic company Leonhard Nilsen & Sønner.

The project partners of Equinor are Norway’s Petoro, Fance’s TotalEnergies, UK-listed Neptune Energy and Germany’s Wintershall Dea.

The Snøhvit Future project includes onshore compression and electrification of the Hammerfest LNG export plant.

The regulators postponed the start of electrification by two years until 2030 compared with the original schedule and in the interim the plant will continue to run on gas turbines.

The gas turbines will also be maintained for back-up power from 2030 to 2033.

Exports

Hammerfest exports around 4.70 million tonnes of LNG per annum and most of the volumes are delivered to European destinations like France, Spain, the Netherlands and Lithuania.

Most feed-gas for Hammerfest comes from a total of 20 wells in the Snøhvit and Albatross fields.

This output is transported to land through a 143-kilometre (90-mile) pipeline and the plant processes around 18.4 million cubic metres (mcm) of natural gas per day.

The Leonhard Nilsen company is headquartered in Andøy in Norway’s Nordland county and the work is worth 1.5 billion Norwegian crowns ($143 million) and will generate local spin-offs for other areas including Finnmark and Troms.

“We are pleased to award this contract to a company in Northern Norway. For Equinor, it has been important that the Snøhvit Future project should create ripple effects throughout the region,” said Trond Bokn, Equinor’s Senior Vice President for Project Development.

Reliable supplier

“The Snøhvit Future project will strengthen Norway’s position as a reliable long-term supplier of gas produced with very low greenhouse gas emissions,” Bokn added.

The project will secure jobs in the North of Norway and guarantee energy supply to Europe through 2050.

Three large modules will be installed at the Hammerfest plant including a compressor, a substation and electric steam boilers.

“Extensive modification work will also be carried out. In addition, there will be a lot of activity around Hammerfest, including the construction of a tunnel and transformer substation allowing power to be transmitted from Hyggevatn to Melkøya,” Equinor explained.

Hammerfest LNG is a key company in the region with approximately 350 permanent employees, plus about 150 contractors and apprentices.

The LNG plant also pays 170 million crowns in property taxes annually to the Hammerfest municipality.

As specialists in tunnelling, the Leonhard Nilsen company has delivered several large-scale projects both in Norway and abroad, and construction work will start once the necessary approvals and permits have been received. This is the company’s first assignment for Equinor.

“They submitted the best bid overall, and we look forward to working with a new supplier in the region. Leonhard Nilsen also has a number of sub-suppliers, including Viggo Eriksen in Hammerfest, Alta Anlegg and Hörmann Norway in Tromsø,” said Mette H. Ottøy, Equinor’s Chief Procurement Officer.

Tanzania, the future LNG exporter, and neighbour Uganda are making progress on oil and natural gas projects and the first shipment of 100 kilometres of line pipe as just arrived at the Tanzanian Port of Dar es Salaam, signalling the start of the main construction phase for the region’s first major cross-border pipeline project.

Nov 6 (LNGJ) - Finnish state-run energy company Gasum has delivered a Norwegian-supplied LNG cargo to Finland’s Inkoo floating storage regasification unit (FSRU) facility to be fed into the nation’s gas pipeline grid. This is the second LNG cargo Gasum has delivered to the Inkoo FRSU since the Balticconnector gas pipeline between Finland and the state of Estonia suffered a rupture and was shut down in early October.

   Gasum explained that repairs to the pipeline are expected to take at least five months and until then all all Finnish natural gas demand must be met through imports of LNG. “We are working hard to secure supply of natural gas over the coming winter season to our customers, whose operations depend on a steady supply of gas,” said Jouni Liimatta, Head of Trading and Optimizing at Gasum. “It is a challenging situation, but we already have experience from rebuilding our pipeline natural gas supply chain after natural gas imports from Russia were suspended in 2022,” Liimatta added.

Norwegian energy company Equinor is proceeding with the development of two natural gas fields offshore Brazil at a cost of around $9 billion and the resources will provide about 15 percent of the South American nation’s gas needs when the project comes on stream.

Norwegian oil and gas company and LNG export plant operator Equinor has submitted a fast-track plan to the government for development and operation of the Eirin natural gas field gas field in the North Sea that will provide more supplies to the Europe.

Equinor, the European LNG producer from the Hammerfest plant in northern Norway and a leading pipeline gas supplier to the European Union and the UK, said it was postponing indefinitely a large offshore wind project called Trollvind citing issues such as rising costs and technology availability.

The East African nation of Tanzania said it was close to final agreement with a consortium comprising Shell, ExxonMobil and Norway’s Equinor along with several other licence partners in a $40 billion liquefied natural gas export project.

“The important negotiations with the government of Tanzania have concluded and the Host Government Agreement (HGA) and a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) are expected to be signed soon,” said a statement from Shell’s office in the Tanzanian capital Dar Es Salam.

Charles Sangweni, the Chief Tanzanian government negotiator in the LNG talks, told local media that the main agreement had just to be approved by the Tanzanian Cabinet and Parliament and would involve total investments of $42Bln.

Sangweni, who is also Director General of the country’s Petroleum Upstream Regulatory Authority, said he hoped that the project’s first formal agreement could be signed before the end of July 2023.

Big step

“We are happy. It is a big step towards the implementation of the project although we still have a lot to do,” he added.

Tanzania's southern neighbour Mozambique became an LNG export in November 2022 with the start of a floating export project led by Italian major Eni while France's TotalEnergies is set to resume its onshore export development in the northeast Mozambican province of Cabo Delgado.

Shell operates Tanzania's Block 1 and Block 4, which hold 16 trillion cubic feet in estimated recoverable gas.

All three parties involved signed a framework agreement in June 2022 aimed at bringing closer the start of the project's construction.

Equinor and Shell, along with US major ExxonMobil and Pavilion Energy of Singapore, had previously discussed building the LNG export plant in the southern Lindi region of Tanzania.

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has said that the LNG project would play a crucial role in creating jobs and advancing economic developed not only in the Lindi and Mtwara regions but in the whole country.

Offshore blocks

Equinor has the operatorship of Tanzania's offshore Block 2, in which ExxonMobil also holds a stake and which is estimated to hold more than 20 Tcf of feed gas.

Equinor has said it also aimed initially to work on the LNG project with Shell, which operates Block 1 and Block 4.

Tanzania already uses some of its natural gas discoveries for power generation and to run manufacturing plants. It also plans to build a fertiliser plant.

The government has put the country's total estimated recoverable gas at close to 60 Tcf.

Analysts note that the development of Tanzania's offshore gas resources has been held up for years due to regulatory and political delays.

The other consortium partners are Indonesia’s MedcoEnergi and Pavilion along with Tanzania Petroleum Development Corp., the state-owned energy company.

The Norwegian parliament, the Storting, has ordered the government to consider an alternative way to cut carbon emissions at Western Europe's largest liquefied natural gas export plant at Hammerfest and to consider the use of carbon capture instead of electrification.