Equinor delays Hammerfest LNG restart to March 2022

Norwegian oil and gas company Equinor has revised the estimated start-up date for its Arctic LNG plant at Hammerfest to March 31 next year to allow more time for repairs after a fire last year, it said on Monday.

A September 2020 blaze shut down production at the Melkoeya plant, also known as Hammerfest LNG, and Equinor had previously scheduled a restart for Oct. 1 this year.

The six-month delay reflects the need for comprehensive repair work that has been hampered by operational measures to handle the COVID-19 situation, Equinor said.

Europe’s only large-scale LNG plant, at Melkoeya island just outside the Arctic town of Hammerfest, can process 18 million cubic metres (mcm) of gas per day when fully operational.

Gas is piped from the offshore Snoehvit field, which is 160km (100 miles) away in the Barents Sea and was also forced to shut as a result of the Hammerfest plant’s closure.

Extensive firefighting work potentially exposed more than 70,000 unique components to seawater and the most time-consuming repairs would be the replacement of more than 180km of electric cable, which is due to arrive by this summer, Equinor said.

Other equipment will not arrive before the summer or autumn, while several compressors needed to be removed and sent to the supplier for repair, the company added.

Last week Norway’s oil and gas safety watchdog presented its investigation into the fire, exposing several breaches of operating procedures.