December 14-29, 2025 December 22

Today, after a brief stop in Havøsund, we will head to Hammerfest, where we will visit the town and the church. In the afternoon, we will continue to Oksfjord, Skiervoy, and Tromsø.     

The gas stream extracted from the Snøhvit field is transported via a 143-kilometer-long pipeline for further processing into liquefied natural gas (LNG) at the onshore facility at Melkøya near Hammerfest in northern Norway.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is separated and transported back to the field through a pipeline for injection into the aquifer (CCS), while LNG, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), and condensates are delivered to the market.

The Snøhvit field was developed in phases to maintain the full production of Hammerfest LNG. The Askeladd field, discovered in 1981, is now connected to the Snøhvit field and began production in December 2022. Production at Askeladd Vest started in September 2025. The gas from Askeladd Vest travels through a total of a 195-kilometer-long pipeline before reaching land.

A total of 18 wells have been drilled in the Snøhvit field, consisting of 16 production wells and two wells for the reinjection of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ).

The facility at Melkøya filters CO₂ from the well stream and then redirects it back into the field located far below the seabed.  Each year, 750,000 tons of CO₂ are separated and stored, which corresponds to the emissions of 400,000 cars.      

Hammerfest claims the title of the northernmost city in the world, although this is contested by the nearby Norwegian town of Honningsvåg (city status since 1996). The validity of this claim depends on the definition of a city. In Norwegian, there is no distinction between city and place. The most accurate translation for both terms is “by” , making the translation from Norwegian to English ambiguous. Although Hammerfest is located further south than Honningsvåg, the city of Hammerfest has nearly 8,000 inhabitants (and over 11,000 in the municipality). A Norwegian law from 1997 states that a municipality must have over 5,000 inhabitants to grant city status to any of its settlements. However, the parliament has not applied this provision retroactively. Honningsvåg received city status before the 1997 law and is thus a city under current Norwegian law and therefore the northernmost city in Norway. Hammerfest is thus the northernmost city with more than 5,000 inhabitants. This is a point of contention between the two cities, both claiming to be the northernmost city in Norway. Utqiagvik in Alaska, with about 4,000–5,000 inhabitants, is indeed further north than the two Norwegian cities but does not claim the title of the northernmost city. There are many other smaller “northernmost settlements” worldwide.