ABS said it has been awarded the classification contract from Petronas of Malaysia for the company’s second floating LNG facility ( PFLNG 2 ). The vessel will be built at the Samsung Heavy Industries yard in Geoje, Korea.
ABS has a long history working with floating gas concepts, classing the first offshore LPG storage unit in the world in 1997 and the first LPG FPSO in 2005. ABS has awarded approval in principle (AIP) for ten floating LNG concepts and has performed pre-front-end engineering and design (FEED) and FEED work on a number of others.
As the selected class society for the PFLNG 2 unit, ABS will provide a comprehensive suite of technical services, including classification.
PFLNG 2 , which is scheduled to see first gas production in early 2018, will be moored via an external turret on the deepwater Rotan gas field offshore Sabah, Malaysia. Designed to produce 1.5 million metric tons of LNG per year, the vessel is expected to operate on site for a minimum of 20 years without dry docking.
The award to class this FLNG newbuild comes just months after the unveiling of the ABS Global Gas Solutions team, a multidisciplinary group of engineers formed to respond to the rapidly escalating number of gas-related projects, including LNG and LPG transportation, the use of LNG and LPG as fuel and the growing number of FLNG projects.
There currently are more than 150 floating oil and gas facilities in the ABS-classed fleet, the largest single market share of any classification society.