Statoil’s LNG Plant at the Snøhvit gas field stops after a second gas leak this year
Statoil's LNG plant
on Melkøya had to shut down production due to a second gas leak. No other information is available at this
time. Statoil had been forced to shut
down production from its Melkøya LNG plant in northern Norway after a
gas leak in January of this year.
Statoil's LNG plant
on Melkøya had been working uninterruptedly for 185 days before it had to shut
down production due to the January 2014 gas leak.
Location
The January 2014 leak
occurred on Sunday evening due to a pump failure at the processing facility
that produces LNG of the natural gas from the Snøhvit gas field in the Barents
Sea in Hammerfest, Norway. The plant was
shut down and the system was depressurized, Finnmarken writes.
Production had not
started up again on Tuesday morning and the company is still working to solve
the technical problems.
Before the stop on
Sunday, Statoil had 185 days of uninterrupted production at the plant. That was the best six months at the plant
since it opened in 2007. Statoil’s LNG
plant on Melkøya was closed in the month of May 2014 for turnaround.
_________________________________________________________________________
January 13, 2012: Norway:
Statoil Halts Production from Snohvit Offshore Field Due to LNG Plant Problems
On Wednesday
afternoon, Statoil temporarily shut down production at its LNG plant at Melkøya
outside Hammerfest following rupture of a fire water line.
The fire water unit
is part of the plant’s safety system, and Statoil implemented a controlled
production shut down. A water leakage at the rupture site has excavated
some of the soil at the site of the leak.
“We are working
to clarify the cause of the water leakage and preparing the repair work, so
that we can resume production quickly,” says Øivind Nilsen, production director for Hammerfest LNG.
Hammerfest LNG
receives gas from the Snøhvit field and production from the field will be
halted until the safety systems are back in operation. Statoil said it was too
early to say anything about the duration of the production halt. Statoil’s
share of production from Snøhvit is 48,000 barrels of oil equivalents per day.
The fire water unit
is regularly tested and inspected, most recently in the early hours of
Wednesday morning this week.
Snøhvit is the first
offshore development in the Barents Sea. Without surface installations, this
project involves bringing natural gas to land for liquefaction and export from
the first plant of its kind in Europe and the world’s northernmost liquefied
natural gas facility.
______________________________________________________________
Statoil Shuts Down LNG Plant
after Gas Leak
Posted on January 9,
2014
Statoil has shut
down its Snøhvit LNG plant on the island of Melkøya, Norway, due to a gas leak,
according to reports.
News agency Reuters
quoted a spokesman saying that LNG plant was shut down Sunday but that a
resumption of production was expected “fairly soon”.
The Snøhvit LNG
plant has been shut down several times since it came onstream in September
2007.
In May 2013, it
was shut down, with personnel being removed to a safe area, following a smoke
alert. In June 2012 it was shut down for a week following a rupture to a
firewater line at the plant.
The Melkøya plant
receives gas from the Snøhvit field in the Barents Sea, with Statoil’s share of
production amounting to approximately 48,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
____________________________________________________________
'Fatality risk' in Snohvit leak
Sounding alarm: PSA
over leak at Snohvit plant
15 May 2014
12:02 GMT
A gas leak at the
Statoil-operated Snohvit LNG plant in northern Norway earlier this year posed
an explosion risk and could have resulted in loss of life, according to
the country’s safety agency PSA to probe Snohvit leaks.
A gas leak that
resulted in a three-day shutdown at Statoil’s Snohvit LNG plant in northern
Norway earlier this week is to be investigated by the country’s Petroleum
Safety Authority (PSA).
__________________________________________________________________
Snoehvit LNG ready to banish
shutdowns this year-Statoil
Plant beset
by unexpected shutdowns since start in 2007
Snoehvit expected to be more reliable after
latest repairs
HAMMERFEST,
Norway, April 25 (Reuters) - Major work at Norway's Snoehvit liquefied natural
gas (LNG) plant will mean a stoppage-free year when it reopens this month,
ending a reputation for unreliability, a Statoil senior executive said.
The plant has
been beset by technical faults that led to several production stoppages in
2012, the most recent of which was a gas leak in February that caused an
evacuation.
Europe's only
LNG-producing plant, on Melkoeya island at Europe's northernmost tip, will
restart production within a week, a maintenance officer at the plant told
Reuters on Monday, after being shut since February.
"We plan
no new turnaround shutdowns for this year," Oeivind Nilsen, production
vice-president for Hammerfest LNG said in an interview.
The plant,
which can produce 4.3 million tonnes per year (mtpa) of super-cooled gas per
year for transport by ship to markets in Europe, the United States and Asia,
has suffered from long outages in the past.
"The
regularity of the Snoehvit plant for the last three years has been in the order
of 73 percent, and that, of course, is not acceptable," Nilsen said.
"Compared
to other LNG plants in the world we need to make a significant step-up in
regularity."
Nilsen said
Statoil had made the plant more robust, and the latest modifications were
expected to increase the number of days per year it operates.
"I think, it
will lift regularity by 10 percent if we only solve the problem with the
pre-treatment facility," Nilsen said.
The February
gas leak was detected inside the "cold box", where cryogenic
heat-exchangers are arranged together with the piping, with empty spaces filled
with insulation material.
"When we
experienced the gas leakage in the "cold box" we knew that it would
result in a long shutdown due to difficult access and extensive pre-work,"
said Nilsen.
"But
this also gave us a golden opportunity to move forward remedies we actually
planned for the next year."
READY MADE DELIVERY
Several
critics blame Snoehvit's design for its long shutdowns as the plant was
delivered on a barge as a finished product, instead of having been built
on-site.
In order to
transport it on the ship, the size was reduced, leaving not much space between
the components, and making fixing faults more difficult than at the other
plants.
"When
Snoehvit was developed we were crossing frontiers, both geographically, being
the first in the Barents Sea, and also technology-wise," Nilsen said.
The plant
also uses an unique gas liquefaction technology, the Mixed Fluid Cascade (MFC),
developed together by Statoil and Germany-based engineering company Linde AG.
Most LNG plants use liquefaction technology developed by Air Products and
Chemicals, Inc.
New elements
included gas production with subsea templates controlled from onshore some 150
km away, sea water cooling, and re-injecting carbon dioxide stripped from the
feed gas back to a subsea reservoir.
Statoil has a
36.79 percent stake in the Snohevit licence, with state-owned Petoro 30
percent, Total 18.4 percent, GDF Suez 12 percent and RWE Dea 2.81 percent.
Last year
Statoil and partners decided against a second processing unit, or train, at
Snoehvit, partly because there was not enough gas reserves to justify it.
"I think
that new gas discoveries in the Barents Sea will trigger coming back to
discussions about the second train," Nilsen said, adding that it was
unlikely to happen this year as the focus of exploration in the Barents Sea was
oil.
Gas
production from the field, which started in 2007, totalled 4.7 bcm in 2012, up
from 4.3 bcm in 2011, but lower than the peak of 4.9 bcm in 2010.