Norway’s Equinor has confirmed that there were no injuries following a hydrocarbon leak at its 4.3 mtpa Hammerfest LNG export plant on the island of Melkoya.
“I can confirm that we had a HC leakage at Snohvit HLNG this morning,” a spokeswoman for Equinor told LNG Prime.
The spokeswoman said the leak was detected just before 10.00am local time and “is now stopped”.
“We are now working to detect the leakage point. Personnel were moved from the area and nobody is injured,” she said.
The spokeswoman added that production was already stopped due to a short, planned turnaround.
Gassco data showed later on Tuesday that Hammerfest LNG will be offline until 1200 local time on March 26 at least due to “a gas turbine failure”. This was later changed to “process problems” and “gas leakage in system 26”.
In May last year, Equinor closed the facility after a gas leak occurred in connection with a valve in one of the plant’s cooling circuits. The firm restarted production in June the same year.
The LNG plant liquefies natural gas coming from the Snohvit field in the Barents Sea.
Gas reaches Hammerfest LNG via a 160-kilometer gas pipeline which became operational in the autumn of 2007.
Equinor is the operator of both the Snohvit field and Hammerfest LNG with a 36.8 percent stake.
Other license owners of Snohvit are Petoro (30 percent), TotalEnergies EP Norge (18.4 percent), Neptune Energy Norge (12 percent), and Wintershall Dea Norge (2.81 percent).
The partners are currently working on upgrading the facility.
The Snohvit Future project will extend the productive life of Hammerfest LNG past 2030, and includes onshore compression and electrification of Hammerfest LNG.
