Equinor extends Norway LNG outage to August 3

Norway's Equinor EQNR has extended a maintenance outage at its Hammerfest LNG terminal, Europe's largest liquefied natural gas export facility, due to problems with a compressor in the plant's cooling system, the company said on Saturday.

The restart was postponed by five days to August 3, the second time the ongoing maintenance was extended.

"A part must be changed and we thus had to move the startup," an Equinor spokesperson said, referring to a component in the cooling compressor.

The Hammerfest plant in Arctic Norway, also known as Melkoeya LNG, went offline for annual maintenance on April 22, and was initially scheduled to return to operation on July 19.

Equinor earlier this month extended the work by 10 days and said the plant was expected to return to operation on July 29.

Melkoeya LNG has the capacity to deliver around 6.5 billion cubic metres of gas per year, enough to supply around 6.5 million European homes, and accounts for roughly 5% of all Norwegian gas exports.

The plant at Melkoeya Island receives gas from the Snoehvit field in the Barents Sea, some 143 km (89 miles) offshore. Its owners are Equinor, Petoro, TotalEnergies TTE, Vaar Energi VAR and Harbour Energy HBR.