Snøhvit ''( en, Snow White)'' 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 presenc ...
in the
Norwegian Sea, situated northwest of
Hammerfest
Hammerfest (; sme, Hámmerfeasta ) is a municipality in Troms og Finnmark county, Norway. Hammerfest is the northernmost town in the world with more than 10,000 inhabitants. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Hamm ...
,
Norway. 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 called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbon di ...
, of condensate (light oil), and 5.1 million tonnes of
natural gas liquids
Natural-gas condensate, also called natural gas liquids, is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields. Some gas species within the raw natu ...
(NGL). The development comprises 21 wells. The Snøhvit development is operated by
Equinor
Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. It is primarily a petroleum company, operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renewable energy. I ...
on behalf of six gas companies owning licenses:
*
Petoro
Petoro is a company that is wholly owned by the Government of Norway. Established in 2001, it manages the Government's portfolio—collectively called State's Direct Financial Interest (SDFI)—of exploration and production licenses for p ...
*
TotalEnergies
*
GDF Suez
Engie SA is a French multinational utility company, headquartered in La Défense, Courbevoie, which operates in the fields of energy transition, electricity generation and distribution, natural gas, nuclear, renewable energy and petroleum.
...
*
Equinor
Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. It is primarily a petroleum company, operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renewable energy. I ...
*
Hess Hess or Heß may refer to:
* Hess (surname), also ''Heß'' in German, people with the surname Hess
* Hess, Oklahoma, a community in the United States
* Hess Educational Organization, the largest private provider of English instruction in the Re ...
*
RWE Dea
The fields were discovered in 1984. The development plan was presented by Statoil in 2001. A subsea production system is planned to feed a land-based plant on the island of
Melkøya via long submarine gas pipeline with diameter of . The gas from Snøhvit will be used for
liquefied natural gas (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
Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG or LP gas) is a fuel gas which contains a flammable mixture of hydrocarbon gases, specifically propane, propylene, butylene, isobutane and n-butane.
LPG is used as a fuel gas in heating appliances, cookin ...
. Long-term export contracts have been signed with
Iberdrola
Iberdrola () is a Spanish multinational electric utility company based in Bilbao, Spain. Iberdrola has a workforce of around 34,000 employees serving around 31.67 million customers. Subsidiaries include Scottish Power (United Kingdom) ...
in Spain and
El Paso in the USA.
There are also limited amounts of
crude oil in this field. 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 ; no, Barentshavet, ; russian: Баренцево море, Barentsevo More) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territo ...
to be developed. Environmental groups like
Natur og Ungdom and
Bellona Bellona may refer to:
Places
*Bellona, Campania, a ''comune'' in the Province of Caserta, Italy
* Bellona Reef, a reef in New Caledonia
*Bellona Island, an island in Rennell and Bellona Province, Solomon Islands
Ships
* HMS ''Bellona'' (1760), a 7 ...
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 sandstones.
[Linjordet, A., Grung Olsen, R., The Jurassic Snohvit Gas Field, Hammerfest Basin, Offshore Northern Norway, 1992, in ''Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade, 1978-1988'', AAPG Memoir 54, Halbouty, M.T., editor, Tulsa: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, , pp. 349-370]
See also
*
Energy in Norway
Norway is a large energy producer, and one of the world's largest exporters of oil.
Most of the electricity in the country is produced by hydroelectricity.
Norway is one of the leading countries in the electrification of its transport sector, wi ...
*
Carbon capture and storage
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon capture and sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) before it enters the atmosphere, transporting it, and storing it ( carbon sequestration) for centuries or millennia. Usually ...
*
Noweco
References
External links
Snøhvit in Aftenbladet Energi Interactive Energy Map
{{DEFAULTSORT:Snohvit
Hammerfest
Natural gas fields in Norway
Natural gas fields in the Arctic Ocean
Barents Sea