Equinor pushes back restart of Hammerfest LNG terminal to late July

Norway's Equinor has extended the maintenance outage at its Hammerfest LNG terminal, Europe's largest liquefied natural gas export facility, by 10 days to July 29, the company said on Monday.

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.

However, the facility will remain offline until July 29, an updated regulatory filing on the transparency website of infrastructure operator Gassco showed.

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 five per cent of all Norwegian gas exports.

The plant at Melkoeya island receives gas from the Snoehvit field in the Barents Sea, some 143 kilometres offshore. Its owners are Equinor, Petoro, TotalEnergies, Vaar Energi and Harbour Energy.

(Reporting by Nora Buli and Anna Ringstrom, editing by Terje Solsvik)