(Adds Equinor comment)
OSLO, May 5 (Reuters) - Equinor's Hammerfest
LNG plant in Arctic Norway suffered a compressor failure on
Thursday and is expected to remain offline until May 19,
Norwegian gas system company Gassco said in a regulatory note on
Friday.
The outage was caused by a technical problem with a heat
exchanger that occurred during a restart of the plant following
a one-day maintenance outage, an Equinor spokesperson said.
The plant will remain offline until repairs have been
carried out, the spokesperson added.
Hammerfest LNG, also known as Melkoeya, has capacity to
deliver about 6.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year,
enough to cover energy demand for about 6.5 million European
homes, or 5% of all Norwegian gas exports, Equinor has said.
Norway is Europe's largest supplier of natural gas following
a sharp reduction in Russian deliveries amid the war in Ukraine.
The Melkoeya plant receives its gas via a pipeline from the
offshore Snoehvit gas field and is owned by operator Equinor
(36.79%) as well as Petoro (30%), TotalEnergies (18.40%), Neptune Energy (12%) and Wintershall Dea (2.81%).
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik and Nora Buli; Editing David
Goodman and Jan Harvey)
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