LNG

Equinor of Norway has signed a new agreement starting immediately to supply German utility and LNG market participant RWE with pipeline natural gas.

Production from the Njord oil and natural gas field in the Norwegian Sea has just resumed to supply Europe following a landmark upgrading project in which both the platform and the floating storage and offloading vessel (FSO) were brought ashore and overhauled before being towed back to sea and re-fitted to the fields.

Gassco, the Norwegian pipeline natural gas operator and whose transported volumes are the main competitor to LNG, said it was given the all-clear by Norwegian police after what it described as “an unclear situation” at the Nyhamna gas plant in Western Norway processing supplies for Europe.

Equinor of Norway, the largest natural gas producer in Western European fields, said it was selling its assets in the oil-rich Bakken shale formation in the US states of North Dakota and Montana as it reported quarterly and annual losses and wrote-down assets by almost $1 billion on the Tanzania LNG project.

Equinor, the operator of the LNG export plant on Melkoya Island in Northern Norway, said that the facility would not be re-starting until early 2021 after a fire described as a very serious incident that had disturbed local residents in the nearby town of Hammerfest.

Sept 9 (LNGJ) - Equinor, the operator of the Hammerfest LNG export plant in northern Norway and a main pipeline gas supplier to Western Europe, said it had conducted an in-depth analysis of gas wells drilled at the Martin Linge field before the company took over as the operator from Total in 2018. This review concluded that several of the wells did not have the necessary barriers. “Equinor  therefore plans to drill new wells in order to ensure safe production,” it stated.

   Equinor said deficiencies were discovered in four gas wells that were drilled at Martin Linge before 2018 and make them inappropriate for safe production. “The wells are considered safe as they are now, but we will keep them plugged and under continuous monitoring until we have reduced the pressure in the formation by producing from other wells. Safety is always priority number one,” said Geir Tungesvik, acting Executive Vice President for Technology, Projects and Drilling at Equinor.    

Samskip, a Dutch shipping company based in Rotterdam and owner of two LNG-powered multi-modal vessels, and Gasum of Finland have signed an accord for the ships to be refuelled at the Gasum-owned small-scale liquefaction plant at Risavika in Norway.