Norway's Statoil said Tuesday that production at its Hammerfest LNG plant on the island of Melkoya in the far north, which services the Snohvit field, had now been closed for a week and there was no sign of output resuming for the moment.
Spokesman Ola Anders Skauby said that the status of the plant remained unchanged.
"It is still down and we do not have any estimates on when it will be coming back up again," Skauby told Platts.
"We will publish information when something comes up. That's the status," Skauby added.
Norwegian state-controlled Statoil closed down output at the plant on Tuesday July 10 due to a water leak in the natural gas dryers, which it said was causing ice formation in the cooling circuit.
It said at the time of the output announcement that there was no timeframe as to when production at the plant would resume.
The company said that substantial efforts were being made to get the gas liquefaction plant back on line quickly and that closer inspection would make it possible to say how long the stoppage will last.
The Hammerfest LNG plant, which takes gas from the Snohvit field in the Barents sea, has encountered a number of production problems since it started operations in August 2007.
Its most recent shutdown was in January and lasted for around a week following the rupture of a fire water line at the onshore processing plant.
The plant, at Melkoya in the far north of Norway, was originally targeted to produce around 5.7 billion cubic meters/year.
Partners in Snohvit include Statoil with 36.79%, Norwegian state holding fund Petoro with 30%, Total with 18.40%, GDF Suez 12% and RWE 2.81%.
