Page 9 - GLNG Week 41

GLNG COMMENTARY GLNG

Unplanned outages

plague LNG plants

A handful of liquefaction terminals around the

world are dealing with unplanned outages for a

variety of reasons

PERFORMANCE SEVERAL LNG facilities globally have had to investigation into the fire, which is also being
deal with outages recently, for a variety of rea- investigated by Norway’s Petroleum Safety
WHAT: sons. Most recently, Equinor said in a regulatory Authority.
Unplanned outages have statement on October 12 that its LNG terminal
hit several LNG terminals on Melkoeya Island in Hammerfest, Norway was Struggling to restart
around the world. expected to resume output on January 1, 2021. Hammerfest LNG joins a handful of other facil-
The plant went offline after it was damaged in a ities where repairs are underway, including two
WHY: fire last month. in Australia. One of these is Chevron’s Gorgon
Liquefaction plants are The fire occurred in one of the plant’s elec- LNG terminal in Western Australia, where one
struggling with weather tricity-generating turbines on September 28 and train remains offline while cracks on propane
events, weld quality was extinguished on the same day. It followed a heat exchangers are being repaired. The other
issues and fire damage. shutdown of the plant following an outage earlier two Gorgon trains are scheduled to go offline
in September. The facility had been scheduled to next year – though not both at the same time –
WHAT NEXT: restart on September 13, but this was delayed to be inspected for similar weld quality issues to
The outages may actually until September 23 following the discovery of a the ones that required repairs in Train 2.
be welcome for others in gas leak. Chevron had initially planned to complete
an oversupplied market. The fire was thus the latest in a series of the repairs on Train 2 by early September, but
mishaps for Hammerfest LNG – which is also subsequently said the restart of the train would
known as Melkoeya LNG – and the most serious. be delayed until October. No further update has
A labour union representative and the head of been issued since.
the local fire brigade were quoted by local media Separately, Royal Dutch Shell is struggling to
in the aftermath of the fire describing it as being restart operations at the Prelude floating LNG
close to a worst-case scenario – which would (FLNG) project, which went offline in February
have been the total destruction of the plant. owing to an electrical trip and has not exported
Equinor has launched an internal any cargoes since. Prelude is the largest FLNG

Hammerfest LNG will
not return to service
until 2021.

Week 41 16•October•2020 www. NEWSBASE .com P9