Equinor Extends Norway LNG Outage by 10 Days

Equinor has extended the outage at its Hammerfest LNG plant in Norway by 10 days, Reuters reports. The plant, also known as Melkoeya LNG, is Europe's largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility, and the outage is expected to last until January 19.

The company initially announced on January 2 that a compressor had failed, and repairs were expected to take a week. However, the repair work proved to be more extensive than anticipated, requiring the procurement of new parts, a company spokesperson told Reuters.

"The compressor repair work was more extensive than first assumed, and the company had to wait for the delivery of new parts," a company spokesperson told Reuters.

The Hammerfest plant has the capacity to deliver about 6.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year, sufficient to supply approximately 6.5 million European homes. The facility accounts for roughly 5% of all Norwegian gas exports.

The plant receives gas from the Snoehvit field in the Barents Sea, located about 143 kilometers offshore. Equinor, Petoro, TotalEnergies, Vaar Energi, and Harbour Energy are the facility's owners.

The extended outage is likely to impact European gas supplies, especially as Norway has become Europe's leading supplier of natural gas since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Most Norwegian exports are transported via an offshore pipeline network in the North Sea.

Equinor has filed a regulatory update stating that production at the Melkoeya facility is now expected to resume late in the evening on January 19.