"We have had bad weather in (the northern-most Norwegian county of) Finnmark for several days and more extreme weather has been forecast," Snoehvit project spokesman Sverre Kojedal told AFP, adding that winds could reach hurricane strength.

"This is a precautionary measure. The situation is not dramatic," he insisted.

Statoil has halted all work on the Melkoeya island outside the northern town of Hammerfest and will transfer 1,100 employees to land Thursday evening. They will be housed at various hotels as well as on one of Norway's famous coastal fjord steamer Hurtigruten.

"We prefer to do this now while the situation is under control. We want to act before things get out of hand so we won't be putting people at risk," Kojedal said, adding that work on the Snoehvit project would not resume before Monday at the earliest.

"It all depends on the weather," he said.

Discovered in 1984, Snoehvit and two small adjoining fields, Askeladd and Albatross, are thought to hold some 193 billion cubic meters (6.80 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas and 113 million barrels of condensate.

Developing the field is expected to cost nearly 60 billion kroner (8.9 billion dollars, 7.4 billion euros) by the time it is scheduled for completion on December 1, 2007.

The bad weather also curtailed oil and gas production on several Statoil installations on Thursday.

According to a calculation by AFP, shutdowns of platforms or slowdowns in production cut Thursday's output by at least 119,000 barrels of oil, 118,000 barrels of oil equivalent in condensates, and 49.5 million cubic metres of gas.

Extraction was hampered on the production ship Norne as shuttles were unable to approach due to heavy seas, with Statoil saying that it hoped conditions would allow normal extraction by Saturday.

Earlier on Thursday, the company was also forced to shut down its Visund North Sea platform due to a gas leak, evacuating 17 of its 91 employees there and halting the platform's daily production of 35,000 barrels of oil and five million cubic metres (175 million cubic feet) of gas.

And its Aasgard B platform and adjacent installations Mikkel and Kristin have been shut since the weekend due to sparks and smoke in the exhaust system. Statoil said it hoped that repair work would be completed soon.

Norway is the world's third-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia and Russia, producing around three million barrels of oil and oil equivalent per day.

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