The Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) said a fire last year at Equinor ASA’s 4.3 million metric tons/year Hammerfest liquefied natural gas terminal resulted from “serious breaches” of regulations.

The facility in northern Norway, where a fire broke out last September, receives and liquefies natural gas from the Snohvit field in the Barents Sea. It is Europe’s largest liquefaction terminal. The outage was one of several across the world that led to tighter supplies earlier this year, when natural gas prices in Europe and Asia soared amid a historic cold snap. 

The fire in the air intake of one of the plant’s five power turbines caused extensive damage and forced the company to shut down the export plant for a year. It isn’t expected to return to service until...