Equinor's Hammerfest LNG plant in Arctic northern Norway has suffered an unexpected outage due to a compressor failure, halting all output for one week, according to a regulatory statement on the Gassco web site on Thursday.
The Hammerfest plant, also known as Melkoeya LNG, has the capacity to deliver about 6.5 billion cubic metres of gas per year, enough to supply about 6.5 million European homes, and accounts for roughly 5% of all Norwegian gas exports.
Equinor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Production at Europe's largest liquefied natural gas export facility is expected to resume late in the evening on Jan. 9, according to the regulatory statement.
Norway became Europe's largest supplier of natural gas following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with most of the Norwegian exports flowing via an offshore pipeline network in the North Sea.
The plant at Melkoeya receives gas from the Snoehvit field in the Barents Sea, some 143 km (89 miles) away from shore. Its owners are Equinor, Petoro, TotalEnergies, Vaar Energi and Harbour Energy.
(Reuters - Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)