Equinor aims for higher-than-normal gas output in summer 2022 -executive

OSLO (Reuters) – Equinor is considering ways to produce more gas from its Norwegian fields during the upcoming summer in Europe, a season in which output is normally affected by maintenance, a senior executive said on Thursday.

“We are looking at different measures when we are coming to summer, that we can do differently, so that we can get more out of the Norwegian continental shelf than we have in previous years,” said Kjetil Hove, Equinor’s head of Norwegian output.

“For example, we are looking at some fields where we can continue to export gas instead of injecting gas,” he told an energy conference in Oslo.

Hove declined to say which fields could see less gas injection and thus more exports, when asked by Reuters.

He said, however, that Equinor was making extra efforts to ensure a high production regularity from all its oil and gas fields, and reiterated plans to restart the Hammerfest LNG plant on May 17, which was hit by a fire in 2020.

The output regularity and the LNG restart would be the biggest contributors to higher gas output in the upcoming summer, Hove said.

(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis and Nora Buli, writing by Terje Solsvik, editing by Gwladys Fouche)