Norway’s Hammerfest LNG back in production after September 2020 fire

After extensive repairs and improvement work, Norway’s Hammerfest LNG is back in production after the fire in September 2020, the operator said on Thursday, with the first liquified natural gas (LNG) is now on tank at Melkøya.

"With the start-up of Hammerfest LNG, we add further volume to the already substantial gas deliveries from Norway. This is of great significance in a period when predictable and reliable supplies are highly important to many countries and customers,” Irene Rummelhoff, Equinor’s executive vice president, Marketing, Midstream and Processing, said in a statement.

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

Restarting operations would be a positive step for Europe, which is scrambling to find alternatives to Russian gas supplies in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

During normal production Hammerfest LNG delivers around 6.5 billion cubic metres per year, equivalent to the annual gas demand of 6.5 million European households.

Norway is an important gas supplier to Europe, and the volumes from Hammerfest LNG account for more than 5% of Norwegian gas exports, the company said.

“Safety has been priority number one during the extensive work process, from the identification of the extent of damage, to the planning of repairs and improvements, and the implementation of the project,” Hammerfest LNG said in a statement.

“Systematic and targeted work has been performed daily by around 1 000 people, bringing the plant safely back online. A stepwise procedure has been followed in the process towards full production,” it added.

Repairs of sophisticated equipment and compressors have been performed, and more than 22 000 components have been checked, 180 km of electric cables have been replaced. To minimise infection spreading extensive infection control measures and strict distancing rules have been implemented, the plant said.