Statoil has been forced to shut down production from its Snohvit liquefied natural gas plant in northern Norway following a gas leak.

The leak occurred late on Sunday evening due to a pump failure at the processing facility of the plant, located on the island of Melkoya off Hammerfest, and the system was subsequently depressurised in line with standard procedures, a Statoil spokesman told Upstream.

He said the plant remained offline while work is ongoing to rectify the technical issue and expected to provide a further update later on Monday, though he believes output will resume “fairly soon”.

It is the latest in a series of technical glitches that have disrupted production from the plant, which receives output from the Snohvit gas field in the Barents Sea and was brought online in 2007