LNG

The Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has issued details of the 2022 oil and natural gas exploration and production licence round for allocations in predefined areas (APA) on the Norwegian Continental Shelf and with the application deadline set for Monday 12th of September 2022.

Norwegian energy major Equinor has awarded Transocean Spitsbergen a firm drilling programme on behalf of licence holders consisting of nine wells and options for another two as Europe awaits further natural gas output from Norway’s pipelines.

Norway’s oil and gas company Equinor and partners in a block Norwegian Sea have decided to invest almost US$1 billion to bring six new natural gas fields on stream as the LNG export plant at Hammerfest in Northern Norway also started up again.

The Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy has updated its estimate of projected European natural gas sales in 2022 to about 8 percent higher than last year and set to be bolstered by the restarting Hammerfest LNG export plant in Northern Norway and with the volumes helping to offset declining Russian gas sales.

May 16 (LNGJ) - Equinor has delayed the scheduled May 17 re-start of the Hammerfest LNG export plant on Melkøya Island in northern Norway for a week as repairs have taken longer than planned after the September 2020 fire.

   “During the weekend, a minor fault was discovered on a compressor that needs to be rectified prior to start-up. The component is now being replaced, and the stepwise process towards operations continues through the week,” explained Equinor. “Hammerfest LNG has been prepared for production, but we are taking the extra time necessary to safely resume operations,” added the 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.

Equinor, the Norwegian oil and gas company, has concluded internal investigations following two fires last year at its facilities in Norway, one at the Hammerfest LNG export plant and a second at the Tjeldbergodden methanol facility, and has submitted the results to the nation’s Petroleum Safety Authority.

Equinor, the operator of the Hammerfest LNG export plant on Melkoya Island in Northern Norway, said the facility would remain shut until September 23 after a gas leak.

Emergency services were sent to the plant on September 13 after an alarm was sounded during preparations to restart the plant after maintenance.

Feed-gas for the single-Train Hammerfest liquefaction facility comes from the Snohvit gas field in the Barents Sea.

Hammerfest exported 4.72 million tonnes of LNG in 2019 compared with 5.17MT in the previous year.

Most of the volumes were delivered to European destinations like France, Spain, the Netherlands and Lithuania.

The Norwegian facility also exported small quantities last year to Asian nations such as China and India.

Hammerfest had been scheduled to restart on September 13 after a short shutdown due to an outage.

Equinor had given no previous reason for the original shutdown.

Europe’s only large-scale LNG plant has a capacity to process 18 million cubic metres of gas per day.

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

This output is transported to land through a 143-kilometre pipeline

A previous scheduled maintenance saw Hammerfest reopen on June 18 after several weeks of shutdown.

Equinor has 37 percent of the Snohvit field and the LNG plant and the other partners include French major Total and Germany’s Wintershall Dea.