Statoil's Hammerfest Temporarily Shut Down

Statoil has said today that it has been forced to shut down production at its Norwegian Hammerfest LNG cooling facility due to water ingression in the natural gas dryers.  When water ingression occurs, ice forms in the cooling circuit.

The Hammerfest LNG facility is responsible for the cooling and processing of gas received from two of Statoil's largest offshore gas fields, the Snøhvit and Albatross fields. Statoil's share from the Snøhvit field, the company says, is about 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent (boe).

The water ingression issue caused production to be shutdown on Tuesday, the company said in a statement today, while the matter is being investigated. Currently, there is no estimate available for when the facility will be up and running again.

Statoil says an estimate will be made on closer inspection of the issue but said that it was doing all it could to resolve the matter.

"Big efforts are being made to get the gas liquefaction plant back on line quickly," it said.