Equinor Norway LNG plant will be off-line March 10-14

According to a Friday regulatory filing, Equinor will shut down its Hammerfest LNG Terminal from March 10 through March 14 to perform "corrective maintenance". This will reduce the daily production capacity from 18.4 millions cubic metres to zero.

The Hammerfest plant (also known as Melkoeya LNG) has the ability to deliver approximately 6.5 billion cubic meters of gas each year. This is enough to provide about 6.5 millions European homes and accounts for about 5% of Norwegian gas exports.

Equinor spokesperson stated in an email that the production had to stop at Europe's biggest liquefied gas export facility to deal with an urgent technical issue.

We have some technical problems with a heat-exchanger. It is not a safety issue, but rather a risk to the equipment if it's left unfixed.

The island of Melkoeya receives its gas from the Snoehvit Field in the Barents sea, about 143 km away. Equinor owns the plant, as do TotalEnergies and Vaar Energi. (Reporting and editing by Nora Buli, Susan Fenton, and Terje Solsvik)

(source: Reuters)