Norway’s Equinor and its partners in the 4.3 mtpa Hammerfest LNG export plant have awarded a major contract to Aibel to upgrade the liquefaction facility located on Melkoya island.
According to a statement by Equinor on Tuesday, the contract has a price tag of 8 billion Norwegian krone ($792.7 million) and remains subject to governmental approval of the Snohvit Future project.
The contract is an option in the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract awarded to Aibel in September 2020.
The EPCI contract involves engineering, procurement, construction and installation of two new processing modules related to the onshore compression and electrification of the Melkoya plant.
Also, the Norway-based firm will build a new receiving station for power from shore and carry out integration work at the plant.
Aibel will also carry out further upgrades of existing systems at Hammerfest LNG to make the plant more resilient for extended life until 2050, Equinor said.
Aibel to award deals to subcontractors
This year and next, Aibel will award several major contracts to its subcontractors for work at the plant and will facilitate the use of local suppliers in several phases of the project, including construction, Equinor said.
Also, the engineering/design work starts immediately.
Aibel will carry out large, complex modifications at Hammerfest LNG. They will also build larger modules at their yards and most of the work will be carried out in the period of 2024-2026, Equinor said.
Equinor and its partners in the Hammerfest LNG export plant said in December they would invest 13.2 billion Norwegian krone ($1.3 billion) to upgrade the facility located on Melkoya island.
“The project will extend plateau production and ensure high gas exports, jobs and ripple effects also after 2030, while reducing CO2 emissions from the plant by 850,000 tonnes annually, corresponding to 2 per cent of Norway’s total emissions,” it said.
Onshore compression and conversion to electric operation of the Hammerfest LNG plant are scheduled to start in 2028.
Equinor started again shipping LNG from the Hammerfest terminal in June last year since a fire that broke out at the facility in September 2020.
Hammerfest LNG liquefies natural gas coming from the Snohvit field in the Barents Sea.
Gas reaches Hammerfest LNG via a 160-kilometer gas pipeline which became operational in the autumn of 2007.
Equinor is the operator of both the Snohvit field and Hammerfest LNG with a 36.8 percent stake.
Other license owners of Snohvit are Petoro (30 percent), TotalEnergies EP Norge (18.4 percent), Neptune Energy Norge (12 percent) and Wintershall Dea Norge (2.81 percent).