Norway's Hammerfest LNG Terminal Restarts after Fire

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Norway's Hammerfest liquified natural gas (LNG) terminal has come back online almost two years after it was shut down following a serious fire in 2020.

Norway is a key gas supplier to Europe, and the volumes from Hammerfest LNG at Melkoya in the north of the country account for more than 5% of Norwegian gas exports. During normal production Hammerfest LNG, which is operated by Equinor (NYSE:EQNR) (Stavanger), delivers around 6.5 billion cubic meters per year, equivalent to the annual gas demand of 6.5 million European households. With the Russian war in Ukraine, gas supplies to Europe have been jeopardized in recent months. The LNG tankers Arctic Voyager, Arctic Lady and Arctic Princess are anchored outside Melkoya, ready to receive new cargoes, according to Equinor. In full production, a ship will leave Melkoya approximately every five days, each containing the equivalent of 1 terawatt of energy.

"With the start-up of Hammerfest LNG, we add further volume to the already substantial gas deliveries from Norway," said Irene Rummelhoff, Equinor's executive vice president, Marketing, Midstream and Processing. "This is of great significance in a period when predictable and reliable supplies are highly important to many countries and customers. I would like to thank all employees, suppliers and partners that have done a great job getting the plant ready for safe start-up. This is a huge and complicated task, with much of the project work during a challenging pandemic."

Hammerfest LNG was shut down in September 2020 after a fire occurred in the filter housing on Gas Turbine Generator 4 during startup. The cause of the fire was spontaneous ignition in the filters in the turbine's air inlets, caused by excessively high temperature over a long period of time. Poor maintenance was also cited as a reason by regulators. Fire damage was limited, but there was significant damage to the facility by fire extinguishing to electrical, instrumentation and mechanical equipment. More than 22,000 components were checked and 180 kilometers of electric cables were replaced. The restart of the terminal was hampered for more than a year by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hammerfest LNG was Norway's and Europe's first large-scale LNG plant when it was commissioned in 2007. It receives gas through a 143-kilometer pipeline from the Snøhvit field in the Barents Sea. At the plant, condensate, water and carbon dioxide are separated from the well stream before the natural gas is cooled down to a liquid state and stored in dedicated tanks. Cooling down the gas to -163 degrees reduces its volume 620 times. The gas is then exported in purpose-built LNG tankers while the removed CO2 is injected and stored in a geological formation below the Snøhvit reservoir. Around 750,000 tonnes of CO2 are removed annually and injected into reservoirs on the Snøhvit field.

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