Equinor's Hammerfest LNG plant outage extended until Saturday
OSLO, April 26 (Reuters) - The planned restart of Equinor’s Hammerfest liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, which was evacuated and shut earlier this week due to a gas leak, has been postponed until Saturday, transparency data showed on Friday.
The Norwegian energy group had previously said it planned to restart production on Friday at 1000 GMT after the gas leak had been repaired.
The outage at the plant, also known as Melkoeya, isnow listed to end on Saturday at 1000 GMT on a transparency website maintained by gas infrastructure operator Gassco.
It could also restart earlier, an Equinor spokesperson said.
The facility, which has a capacity to deliver 18.4 million cubic metres (mcm) per day, was briefly evacuated on Tuesday while already offline for a maintenance outage initially scheduled to last just one day.
(Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Stine Jacobsen and Terje Solsvik)
Related Knowledge Center: Liquefied natural gas
Driven by plentiful natural gas produced from shale plays, the United States began exporting liquefied natural gas in 2016 when the Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana opened and shipped its first cargo. Since then, additional capacity, or trains, have been added to Sabine Pass, and terminals have become operational in Cameron Parish, La.; Hackberry, La.; Cove Point, Md.; and Corpus Christi, Texas. The Energy Information Administration projects that U.S. LNG export capacity will reach 8.9 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) by the end of 2019, making it the third largest in the world, behind Australia and Qatar. The tariff war with China has the potential to impact some final investment decisions for additional terminals in the coming months.