Melkøya ( sme, Muolkkut) is an

island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...

Hammerfest Municipality 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 Hammerfe ...

Troms og Finnmark Troms og Finnmark (; sme, Romsa ja Finnmárku ; fkv, Tromssa ja Finmarkku; fi, Tromssa ja Finnmark, lit. Troms and Finnmark in English), is a county in northern Norway that was established on 1 January 2020 as the result of a regional reform. ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

. The island is connected to the town of Hammerfest (on the neighboring island of Kvaløya to the west) by the Melkøysund Tunnel which was completed in 2003. The industrial island is the endpoint of the undersea pipeline that transports

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 carbo ...

from the

Snøhvit Snøhvit ''( en, Snow White)'' is the name of a natural gas field in the Norwegian Sea, situated northwest of Hammerfest, Norway. The northern part of the Norwegian Sea is often described as the Barents Sea by offshore petroleum companies. ''Snø ...

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 presence ...

s 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 ...

. The gas goes through the long pipeline to the processing plant Hammerfest LNG on Melkøya where 18 million cubic meters per day is converted into

liquefied natural gas Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the vol ...

. The plant opened in 2007 and it 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 ...

. After a fire closed the plant in 2020, it re-opened in 2022. Liquefied natural gas is then exported from Melkøya to world markets by a LNG gas carrier or tanker.

History

The island was previously used for farming, and rental houses for seasonal fishermen were also built on the island. In 2001 and 2002, major archaeological investigations on Melkøya were undertaken before Statoil's development of the island began. The development of the island has changed Melkøya completely. On 21 August 2007, the gas from the Snøhvit field began flowing to Melkøya. The endangered black-legged kittiwake adopted a man-made cliff at the facility for nesting, making it one of the largest kittiwake colonies in the world.Her er fuglefjellet til 50 milliarder kroner
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Media gallery

Melkoya.jpg, Evening view of the island Melkøya winter4.jpg, View in winter Hammerfest dusk LNG.jpg, View of the Hammerfest area, including Melkøya Melkøy3 winter.jpg, View of the storage tanks 11-06-07 016 LPG Tanker VICTORIA KOSAN loading LNG at Melkøya.jpg, LPG tanker waiting to load liquefied natural gas at Melkøya.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Melkoya Islands of Troms og Finnmark Hammerfest

History

Media gallery

See also

References