LNG

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.

The first cargo to leave the Hammerfest liquefaction and export plant in northern Norway since the September 2020 fire is on its way to re-connecting the Norwegian seaborne gas supply chain for the European Union.

Equinor, the Norwegian oil and gas company whose Hammerfest LNG plant is scheduled to resume production in mid-May, has made a new natural gas and oil discovery in the North Sea.

State-owned Equinor is the operator of production licence 293 B close to the Troll and Fram area where the find was made.

“Based on preliminary estimates the size of the discovery is between 4 and 8 million standard cubic metres of recoverable oil equivalent, or 25-50 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent,” said the company.

Temporarily called Kveikje, this is the sixth discovery in this area since the third quarter of 2019.

“Up to more than 300 million barrels of oil equivalent were proven in the five former discoveries,” said Equinor.

The discovery comes as the Hammerfest LNG plant is scheduled to come back on stream following repairs from a fire in September 2020 and will provide more than 6 billion cubic metres of gas per year from the Barents Sea to European customers.

“We are very pleased to make another discovery in this area that we regard to be commercial,” said Lill H. Brusdal, Equinor’s vice president for the Troll area’s exploration and production.

Tie-in

“As we did with the other discoveries in this area, we will consider tying this discovery to the Troll B or C platform,” added Brusdal.

“By utilising the existing infrastructure, we will be able to recover these volumes at a low cost and with low emissions,” she stated.

“There were several drilling targets in the exploration well. After Kveikje was discovered, drilling continued to the next target in the upper part of the Cretaceous stratigraphic sequence,” said Equinor.

The well was drilled by “Deepsea Stavanger” and the latest plans are for Equinor to drill another exploration well in this area this year.

The licence owners are Equinor (51 percent), Norwegian firm DNO AS (29 percent), Japan’s Idemitsu (10 percent) and London-listed Longboat Energy (10 percent).

Equinor’s exploration strategy is to explore for volumes in mature areas, where discoveries can be tied into existing infrastructure to maximise the value of investments.

“We will drill between 20 and 30 exploration wells each year moving forward,” said the company.

“Around 80 percent of the exploration wells will be drilled in familiar areas near existing infrastructure, but certain new areas and ideas will be tested.,” said the Stavanger-based company. 

Norwegian energy company Equinor has delayed the re-start of the Hammerfest LNG export plant in northern Norway by six weeks to mid-May 2022 as repair work continues after the 2020 fire at the facility.

Norwegian energy and LNG producer Equinor has been awarded 26 new production licences by Norway’s Ministry of Petroleum and Energy in the latest award in predefined areas (APA) with 12 licences as operator and 14 licences as partner.

“Exploration is essential to secure continued value creation on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS),” said Jez Averty, Equinor’s senior vice president for subsurface in Exploration and Production.

“The APA rounds are very important to us and we are pleased about the award of new production licences,” added Averty.

Equinor’s Hammerfest LNG plant on Melkoya island in northern Norway is currently closed after a fire occurred on September 28 2020.

The facility, which supplies European LNG terminals, is expected to re-open in the current first quarter of 2022 after repairs have been completed.

Equinor said that the 26 production licences are divided as follows: 12 in the North Sea, 10 in the Norwegian Sea and four in the Barents Sea, from where Hammerfest LNG receives its feed gas for processing.

“Equinor’s ambition is to transform the NCS from an oil and gas province to a low-carbon energy province,” the company explained.

“In this transformation, oil and gas play a crucial role, both in delivering energy that is critical to society, but also through the expertise, technology and capital needed to realise the transformation,” added Equinor.

Averty said he believed in the NCS and that there is still substantial value to find and develop.

“A good example is our latest discovery, Toppand, which was awarded in the 2011 APA,” he added.

“This discovery shows the potential for value creation on the NCS, even in mature areas, through use of new information and modern exploration technology,” he stated.

“At least 80 per cent of our exploration resources and investments will be concentrated around existing infrastructure - so-called near-field or infrastructure-led exploration,” declared the Equinor executive.

During 2022, Equinor plans to take part in around 25 exploration wells, mainly near existing infrastructure.

Most of the wells will be drilled in the North Sea, some in the Norwegian Sea and a few in the Barents Sea.

Equinor, the Norwegian energy company formerly known as Statoil has awarded a major contract to Nexans in France to design, manufacture and supply a total of 42 kilometres of static infield and inter-field umbilicals to control the subsea production systems linked to the Hammerfest LNG plant.

Statoil and partners, including two US majors, have found non-commercial natural gas volumes in the Korpfjell well in the Barents Sea about 420 kilometres offshore its LNG export plant at Hammerfest, the first exploration well drilled in the Norwegian section of a formerly disputed area between Norway and Russia.