Page 9 - GLNG Week 28

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Hammerfest LNG’s hydrate hiccup
PERfoRmanCE
NORwAY’S Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) has identi ed a number of problems at Equinor’s Hammerfest LNG plant, giving the company until December 31 to resolve the issues.
e July 16 order follows problems in March that led the plant to shut down. Hydrates had formed in a number of pressure safety valves, in some instances extensive enough to disable the valves. is could have led to fracturing in pro- cess equipment as pressure built up, potentially causing an “explosion and big escape of hydro- carbons with an associated increase in the prob- ability of ignition”, a report from the PSA said.
Equinor shut down the plant on March 11 in order to carry out work on the pressure safety valves. e regulator said heat trace cables and insulation were missing from 190 valves. Prob- lems had been found on these valves earlier but without being resolved. Liquefaction resumed later in March and the PSA order has no impact on planned production.
The PSA flagged up four problems. Man- agement at Hammerfest LNG failed to fol- low up safety issues, there were de ciencies in risk assessment, inadequate responses to the
discovery of hydrates in a valve and de ciencies in reporting safety incidents.
Equinor has been ordered to review its safety management at the plant. It must also identify which barriers have been impaired and how these may combine. e PSA has said it must be informed when the work has been carried out and that the impact of the measures must be tested.
worryingly, hydrates had been found in valves in December 2017 but this was not reg- istered in the company’s health and safety regu- lations. is became known in the organisation in early 2018 but the PSA had not been told until March 7 of this year.
when Hammerfest LNG was built it was largely designed without insulation. Since its construction, though, attitudes and understand- ing of where hydrates can form have changed.
is is not Hammerfest LNG’s rst brush with the PSA. In June 2018, the regulator launched an investigation into a leak of LNG at the plant, which occurred during tanker lling. Concerns about pressure safety valves had previously been agged up in 2010.™
HammERfEst:
The Hammerfest lNG plant, on Melkoya island, receives gas from the Snohvit eld, in the barents sea,
via a 145-km pipeline. The plant started up in August 2007. in addition to the lNG process, the plant also separates the CO2 from the gas and returns it to the eld for reinjection.
The lNG plant has a nameplate capacity of 4.3 million tpy. in addition
to exports of lNG, the plant also provides marine bunkering and distribution to local industry, via semi-trailer.
miDDlE East
McDermott wins Sohar FEED contract
PRojECts & ComPaniEs
US services rm McDermott has been awarded a contract to provide front-end engineering design (FEED) services for the Sohar LNG Bun- kering project in Oman. e deal, which is worth up to US$50mn, was awarded by the local sub- sidiary of French super-major Total in collabo- ration with Oman Oil Co. (OOC).
Announcing the deal, McDermott said that the deal covered fully de ning the onshore mid- scale LNG facilities and preparing a competitive tender for the engineering, procurement, supply, construction and commissioning phase.
e rm alluded to a “rapid growth period” in the LNG bunkering market “driven largely by the International Maritime Organization’s [IMO’s] legislation to signi cantly limit sulphur emissions”.
Alongside Abu Dhabi, Oman is at the fore- front of Middle Eastern e orts to move into the small but fast-developing segment, with both taking steps in February this year through tie- ups with international players.
while Total signed the upstream agreements required to feed the Sohar bunkering plant, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) subsidiary ADNOC Logistics & Services agreed to collab- orate with a Norwegian specialist in small-scale LNG transport and bunkering, Kanfer Shipping.
Total, Royal Dutch Shell, OOC and the Ministry of Oil & Gas signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) in May 2018 calling for the development of gas reserves in the west-cen- tral Greater Barik area of Block 6, a substantial concession covering the bulk of the sultanate’s onshore territory. is is operated by Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), a government-led joint venture in which the two foreign compa- nies are minority shareholders.
Output is targeted at an initial 14.2mn cubic metres per day, rising later to around 28 mcm per day. Total has committed to deploying its 25% equity share to develop a 1mn tonne per year (tpy) modular LNG plant and bunkering facility at Sohar.
while major expansion may be di cult, bun- kering is a potentially attractive option. Shipping use is low, for now, but is likely to increase fol- lowing the IMO 2020 rules. e Omani govern- ment is keen to turn Sohar into a bunkering hub, despite its proximity to the well-established refu- elling centre at Fujairah, on the UAE’s east coast.
e port has seen a large increase in tra c over the past 20 months as a result of the UAE and Saudi-led embargo against Qatar – with supplies in and out of the latter thus rerouted via northern Oman.™
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