Equinor halts some Mongstad gasoline production, evacuates workers after leak

By Nerijus Adomaitis and Ole Petter Skonnord

OSLO (Reuters) - Equinor's Mongstad oil refinery on Norway's west coast evacuated 300 workers and halted part of its gasoline production following a leak, the company said on Monday.

The spill of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) led to an emergency shutdown of the refinery's naphtha-making unit, however there were no injuries, Equinor spokeswoman Elin Isaksen said.

"Part of the gasoline production has stopped as a consequence, not all," she said.

The company declined to specify how much of its output had been stopped and how much of the facility's operations were still working.

Local police and the fire service confirmed earlier that the leak had been stopped.

Mongstad is Equinor's largest refinery and has a crude oil and condensate distillation capacity of 226,000 barrels per day, according to the company.

In October 2017, Mongstad suffered a two-week outage caused by a naphtha leak. In August, the oil refinery halted production due to a power outage.

(Writing by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Mark Potter and Susan Fenton)