or is an

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

Hammerfest Municipality Hammerfest (; ) is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Finnmark Counties of Norway, county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality being the Hammerfest (town), town of Hammerfest which is considered the List of no ...

Finnmark Finnmark (; ; ; ; ) is a counties of Norway, county in northern Norway. By land, it borders Troms county to the west, Finland's Lapland (Finland), Lapland region to the south, and Russia's Murmansk Oblast to the east, and by water, the Norweg ...

county,

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 island is connected to the town of Hammerfest (on the neighbouring island of Kvaløya to the west) by the 2,316 metres-long Melkøysund Tunnel, which was completed in 2003. The industrial island is the endpoint of the undersea pipeline that transports

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 ...

from the

Snøhvit Snøhvit ''()'' 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. ''Snøhvit'' is al ...

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 ...

s 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 ...

. The gas goes through the long pipeline to the processing plant Hammerfest LNG on Melkøya where 18 million cubic metres 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 to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volume o ...

. The plant opened in 2007 and 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 ...

. 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. The plant emitted 0.9 million tonnes of in 2023.

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 Finnmark Hammerfest

History

Media gallery

See also

References