Norway's Statoil said Monday it had shuttered production at its 4.3 million mt/year Hammerfest processing plant in the far north of the country, which processes the gas from the Snohvit field, due to technical problems.
State-controlled Statoil said output at the plant was halted after a power failure just before 1230 GMT Monday.
Statoil said the incident resulted in its emergency response organization being mobilized, and personnel were -- per its safety plan -- evacuated from the inner area to the outer plant area.
"No one was injured during the incident," Statoil said.
The Norwegian group said the LNG plant was without power for about 20 minutes before it received electricity from the national grid, and work to normalize activity was currently being carried out.
"Production at [the plant] will remain shut down until the facility has been inspected Tuesday and checked for any damage or malfunction," it said.
The remote Arctic Snohvit offshore field in the Barents Sea is one of Europe's bigger gas producers and Norway is the second biggest gas supplier to the continent after Russia.
But the field and its onshore LNG processing plant have seen persistent technical problems, especially during the winter due to extreme cold.
The LNG plant has encountered a number of production problems since it started operations in August 2007, including being shut in July due to a water leak in the gas dryers, which caused ice formation in the cooling circuit. In January, it was shut for around a week following a rupture of a fire water line at the onshore processing plant.
Snohvit is the first offshore development in the remote Arctic waters of the Barents Sea. Its subsea installations pipe natural gas ashore through a 143 km pipeline to be liquefied at the processing plant on the far northern Norwegian island of Melkoya, Europe's first LNG export facility.
The partners in the field are Statoil (36.79% and operator), Petoro (30%), Total (18.40%), GDF Suez (12%) and RWE Dea (2.81%).
Statoil said Monday that Norwegian authorities have been notified and the incident would be investigated.
