Snøhvit ''()'' is the name of a
natural gas field
A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the prese ...
in the
Norwegian Sea, situated northwest of
Hammerfest,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
. The northern part of the Norwegian Sea is often described as the Barents Sea by offshore petroleum companies. ''Snøhvit'' is also the name of a development of ''Snøhvit'' and the two neighbouring natural gas fields ''Albatross'' and ''Askeladden''. Estimated recoverable reserves are 193 billion cubic metres of
natural gas
Natural gas (also fossil gas, methane gas, and gas) is a naturally occurring compound of gaseous hydrocarbons, primarily methane (95%), small amounts of higher alkanes, and traces of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide and helium ...
, of condensate (light oil), and 5.1 million tonnes of
natural gas liquids (NGL). The development comprises 21 wells. The Snøhvit development is operated by
Equinor
Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger, Norway. It is primarily a petroleum company, petroleum company operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renew ...
on behalf of six gas companies owning licenses:
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Petoro
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TotalEnergies
TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and is one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas explorati ...
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Engie
Engie SA (stylised in all caps as ENGIE) is a French multinational electric utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie. Its activities cover electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear power, renewable energy ...
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Equinor
Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger, Norway. It is primarily a petroleum company, petroleum company operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renew ...
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Hess
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RWE Dea
The fields were discovered in 1984. The development plan was presented by Statoil in 2001, with production starting in 2006. A subsea production system was planned to feed a land-based plant on the island of
Melkøya via long submarine gas pipeline with diameter of . The gas from Snøhvit was to be used for
liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...
(LNG) production. The total costs of field development will be around NOK 34.2 billion. The LNG plant will emit 920 thousand tonnes of
each year, an increase of Norway's total emissions by almost 2%.
The annual export capacity is 5.75 billion cubic metres of LNG, 747 thousand tonnes of condensate and 247 thousand tonnes of
liquified petroleum gas. Long-term export contracts have been signed with
Iberdrola
Iberdrola, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational electric utility company based in Bilbao, Spain. It has around 40,000 employees and serves around 30 million customers.
Subsidiary, Subsidiaries include ScottishPower (United Kingdom), Ava ...
in Spain and
El Paso
El Paso (; ; or ) is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The 2020 United States census, 2020 population of the city from the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the List of ...
in the USA.
The field also holds limited amounts of
crude oil
Petroleum, also known as crude oil or simply oil, is a naturally occurring, yellowish-black liquid chemical mixture found in geological formations, consisting mainly of hydrocarbons. The term ''petroleum'' refers both to naturally occurring u ...
. The recent discovery of the nearby
Goliat oil field has made the oil reserves at Snøhvit more exploitable.
The development of Snøhvit sparked political controversy in Norway, as it was the first discovery in the
Barents Sea
The Barents Sea ( , also ; , ; ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.World Wildlife Fund, 2008. It was known earlier among Russi ...
to be developed. Environmental groups like
Natur og Ungdom and
Bellona argued that the Barents Sea is too sensitive for oil and gas production, and that the Melkøya LNG plant would drastically increase Norway's emissions. In the summer of 2002, protesters from
Natur og Ungdom were arrested by the police after blocking the construction of the LNG plant at Melkøya for 10 days.
Geology
The reservoir resides in three fault blocks located in the Hammerfest Basin and consists of Lower to Middle
Jurassic
The Jurassic ( ) is a Geological period, geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 143.1 Mya. ...
sandstone
Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...
s.
Carbon Capture and Storage
The Snøhvit gas field uses
Carbon Capture and Storage
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a process by which carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial installations is separated before it is released into the atmosphere, then transported to a long-term storage location.IPCC, 2021Annex VII: Glossary at ...
(CCS) to avoid some emissions from gas processing. Gas from the Snøhvit field contains between 5 and 8 percent carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is separated in the Hammerfest LNG plant on the island of
Melkøya, transported back into the gas field, and injected into geological formations. This project has the capacity to store around 0.7 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Those emission savings are relatively small compared to the emissions generated by the LNG exported from Snøhvit, which are around 13 million tons.
In 2022, Equinor had announced plans for reinvestments at the Hammerfest LNG plant, including electrification of processes previously powered by fossil gas. The electrification project was controversially discussed, and using carbon capture and storage to avoid these additional emissions was proposed as an alternative. However, according to Equinor, doing so would have been extremely expensive.
Equinor expected costs of around 6,500 Norwegian kroner per ton of carbon dioxide avoided, which is much higher than usual cost estimates for CCS.
Equinor proceeded with the electrification project, and it was approved by the Norwegian government in August 2023.
See also
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Energy in Norway
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Carbon capture and storage
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a process by which carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial installations is separated before it is released into the atmosphere, then transported to a long-term storage location.IPCC, 2021Annex VII: Glossary at ...
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Noweco
References
External links
Snøhvit in Aftenbladet Energi Interactive Energy MapEquinor information page about Snøhvit
{{DEFAULTSORT:Snohvit
Hammerfest
Natural gas fields in Norway
Natural gas fields in the Arctic Ocean
Barents Sea