Production resumed on 7 November, at the Snøhvit plant outside Hammerfest in northern Norway after a three-month planned shutdown for upgrading and maintenance.

The extensive refurbishment and modification of the Hammerfest LNG facility on Melkøya is intended to make the gas processing and liquefaction plant more robust and to ensure that it can maintain a high level of production in the future.

The plant ran at virtually full capacity from February until the shutdown began in August, and the project has aimed to safeguard that high level of performance.

Replacing and modifying a number of heat exchangers and other systems will also make the facility more robust against production interruptions.

Among the big jobs carried out was the replacement of 15 heat exchangers, which form the core of the liquefaction process for the Snøhvit gas.

“We replaced two of seven seawater exchangers, which have caused problems with leaks, as early as last autumn,” says operations vice president Knut Henrik Dalland.

During this year’s shutdown, a further four of these units were swapped for a more robust type. The seventh could be replaced during the planned turnaround in 2010.

”With pre- and post-shutdown activities, more than 600,000 hours have been worked in connection with this turnaround,” reports Dalland.

“That means the operation at Hammerfest LNG has been as big as all the turnarounds on the Norwegian continental shelf put together.”

A total of 1,550 people were engaged at the plant during the shutdown. All work included in the original plans was done, and the facility was restarted as planned.

Hammerfest LNG is expected to be capable of operating at full capacity after the turnaround, and this will be verified by a performance test at the end of the year.

Tags: Statoil