Snøhvit

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Snøhvit or Snow White is the name of a development of Snøhvit, Albatross and Askeladd natural gas fields in the Barents Sea, 140 km northwest of Hammerfest, Norway, with estimated recoverable reserves of 140 billion m³ of natural gas and small quantities of condensate. The development compromises 21 wells. The Snøhvit development is operated by Statoil on behalf of seven gas companies owning licenses:

Petoro
TotalFinaElf
Gaz de France
Norsk Hydro
Amerada Hess
RWE Dea
Svenska Petroleum Exploration

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 north-western coast of Melkøya via 160 kilometer long submarine gas pipeline with diameter of 680 mm. The gas from Snøhvit will be used for LNG production. The total costs of field development will be around NOK 34.2 billion.

Production is scheduled to commence in October 2006. The annual export capacity will be 5.75 bcm of LNG, 747,000t of condensate and 247,000t of LPG. The long-term export contracts are signed with Iberdrola in Spain and El Paso in the USA.

There is also a some oil in this field. The recent discovery of the nearby Goliat oil field has made the oil reserves at Snøhvit more exploitable.