Norway asks Equinor to review safety at Hammerfest LNG plant

Norway's oil safety regulator said it had identified safety breaches at Equinor's Hammerfest liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, which shut down for repairs in March, and notified the company to review security at the facility.

Source: EWA

The regulator's demand followed an investigation launched at the plant after the outage, in which deficiencies were discovered in 190 safety valves that were missing heating cables and insulation.

Hammerfest located on Europe's northern tip, processing output from the Arctic Snoehvit field, the only field producing natural gas in the Barents Sea.

The plant restarted production later in March and the regulator's instruction on Tuesday did not place any restrictions on its output. Equinor was given a deadline to address the safety issues, set at Dec. 31.

"We have received the Notice of order from The Petroleum Safety Authority Norway. We will follow up and complete the measures given in the Notice of Order within the timeline given from the PSA," an Equinor spokesman said in an email.

Equinor operates the plant and the Snoehvit gas field, and its partners are the Norwegian state-owned company Petoro, Total , Neptune Energy and DEA. (Reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos, editing by Louise Heavens)

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