Statoil Restarts Hammerfest LNG

Statoil has announced today that it has resumed production at its Hammerfest LNG facility in Norway following a shutdown last month.

On the 12th of July, Statoil said that it was forced to shut down production at the Hammerfest LNG cooling facility, the Melkøya plant, due to an issue with water ingression in the natural gas dryers. This kind of issue can cause ice crystals to form in the cooling circuits of the facility. 

Statoil said today that production had resumed again at the facility after the more than two-week shutdown with the LNG plant restarted at the end of July/start of August. The resumption of production will be staggered with the facility expected to return to full production in time.

The cooling facility process a large amount of gas for Statoil every day with gas processed from two massive Norwegian fields, the Snøhvit and Albatross fields.

Statoil says its share from production at the Snøhvit field alone amounts to 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe) a day.