Hammerfest LNG, the liquefied natural gas export facility in Norway, is back online following more than three months of scheduled maintenance works.
The return of LNG supply from Norway, which is also Europe’s top pipeline gas supplier having replaced Russia in 2022, contributed to the fall in Europe’s benchmark natural gas prices on Monday.
Hammerfest LNG, Europe’s first LNG export plant, is an onshore plant on the island of Melkøya which receives and processes natural gas from the Snøhvit field via a pipeline from the Barents Sea. The Melkøya plant accounts for 5% of Norway’s natural gas exports. During normal production, Hammerfest LNG delivers 6.5 billion cubic meters of LNG per year, and LNG ships call at Melkøya roughly every five days.
Hammerfest LNG had issues with unexpected outrages early this year, when operations and exports were halted in peak winter due to compressor failures and other technical problems. In recent years, a major fire, gas leaks, and equipment failures have hampered the normal operations at the plant.
Hammerfest LNG was offline for a year and a half after a fire at the facility in September 2020. The plant, Europe’s only large-scale LNG export facility, resumed operations in March 2022, but has been on-and-off since then, due to various issues.
At the end of April, Equinor shut the plant down for its annual maintenance, which was expected to last until the middle of July. The deadline has been extended twice since July 19, when it was initially supposed to come back online.
Finally, Equinor restarted the export plant on Sunday, August 3, a spokesperson for the Norwegian energy major told Reuters on Monday.
Early this year, gas export system operator Gassco said that Norway’s natural gas exports hit a record level in 2024 and are expected to remain close to this all-time high in the next few years.
Norway’s gas accounted for 30% of Europe’s natural gas imports and about 9% of all European energy consumption last year.
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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