Snøhvit suffers production cut; StatoilHydro confirms Q4 repairs
Production at StatoilHydro’s Snøhvit LNG liquefaction plant in northern Norway was halted on 21st August after a gas leak was discovered at the plant, a spokesman for the plant confirmed. The liquefaction facility was evacuated and production was restored on 23rd August following a two-day outage.
The spokesman said StatoilHydro’s 140,000 m3 LNG vessel Arctic Voyager, had been successfully loaded with a cargo before the incident took place. However, Lloyd’s MIU AIS shipping data showed the vessel bound at the plant until 26th August before setting out for Bilbao with an ETA of 1st September.
The shipping data showed the 154,500 m3 GdF vessel Provalys had loaded at the plant on the 23rd August and was scheduled to deliver its cargo to Tokyo by 24th September.
The StatoilHydro spokesman also confirmed planned repair work at Snøhvit later in the year. “We have decided to change two heat exchangers and have ordered replacements to arrive in the first part of October. The stoppage for installing the new heat exchangers will be in the fourth quarter of this year,” he said.
The spokesman was unable to give the precise date or duration of the planned works.
The Melkøya island facility was closed for planned maintenance between 6th May and 10th July this year, and has since been operating at 60% of its 4.3 million tonnes/year (5.8 billion cubic metres/year) capacity, never having reached full capacity. At the time, StatoilHydro said a decision on how to improve the plant’s performance would be made this autumn, with any modifications taking place in the second half of 2009.
Speaking at the ONS conference in Stavanger this week, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said the LNG plant had suffered “huge technical problems”, but added, “StatoilHydro is taking this very seriously and is committing big resources to solving the problem.”
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