The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas major Shell recently shared a video tracking the 2015 progress of the company’s first ever FLNG project, Prelude, that will be located offshore Western Australia. The video covers the installation of the last giant topside module in South Korea, through subsea equipment installation on the field to the completion of a 17 kilometre long mooring chain in Spain.
According to Shell, the FLNG will be the biggest floating production facility in the world and will operate in the Australian Browse Basin at a depth of approx 250 meters.
The Prelude FLNG facility will be 488m (1,600 feet) long, 74m (240 feet) wide and along with its contents, will weigh around 600,000 tonnes. Shell says it will be the largest floating offshore facility in the world.
Aside from the Prelude field that is located 200 miles off Australia’s north-west coast, the company said the giant vessel might operate on other fields in the region over the next 25 years.
It is expected that the unit will produce 5.3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of liquids: 3.6 mtpa of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate and 0.4 mtpa of liquefied petroleum gas.
The project is designed to enable the development of gas resources ranging from clusters of smaller more remote fields to potentially larger fields via multiple facilities where, for a range of reasons, an onshore development is not viable.
Shell took the final investment decision (FID) on the Prelude FLNG project in May 2011. Construction began in October 2012 while the hull was floated in December 2013 at the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard in South Korea.
Shell is the operator of Prelude FLNG in a joint venture with INPEX (17.5%), KOGAS (10%) and OPIC (5%).
Offshore Energy Today Staff
[mappress mapid=”2983″]