diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index ca44448fa8a..b1a698b1b36 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -27,7 +27,9 @@ Release 0.93.0 - Unreleased
 
   BUG FIXES
    HBASE-4488  Store could miss rows during flush (Lars H via jgray)
-
+   HBASE-4673  NPE in HFileReaderV2.close during major compaction when
+               hfile.block.cache.size is set to 0 (Lars H)
+ 
   TESTS
    HBASE-4534  A new unit test for lazy seek and StoreScanner in general
                (mikhail via jgray)
diff --git a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFileReaderV2.java b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFileReaderV2.java
index 29b43fb5ac5..3f94396927f 100644
--- a/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFileReaderV2.java
+++ b/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/hbase/io/hfile/HFileReaderV2.java
@@ -323,7 +323,7 @@ public class HFileReaderV2 extends AbstractHFileReader {
   }
 
   public void close(boolean evictOnClose) throws IOException {
-    if (evictOnClose) {
+    if (evictOnClose && cacheConf.isBlockCacheEnabled()) {
       int numEvicted = cacheConf.getBlockCache().evictBlocksByPrefix(name
           + HFile.CACHE_KEY_SEPARATOR);
       LOG.debug("On close of file " + name + " evicted " + numEvicted