Automation specialist Emerson has secured work on world’s largest offshore facility ever built, the Prelude FLNG facility, operated by Shell.
Shell has selected Emerson to provide automation maintenance and reliability services for the company’s floating LNG facility, currently under construction in South Korea.
Prelude is the world’s largest floating production facility, so big, it is compared to a size of six aircraft carriers.
Once delivered in South Korea, it will process natural gas collected from subsea wells 475 kilometers (almost 300 miles) offshore from Broome, Western Australia.
Emerson is not a newcomer to the project, as it has been main automation contractor on the Prelude project since 2010, responsible for process control and monitoring technologies.
Under the new multi-year support contract, Emerson experts working both onshore and offshore will provide ongoing reliability and maintenance services for a broader range of equipment.
Emerson and its local business partner, Western Process Controls, will provide equipment monitoring, diagnostic services, spares support, and maintenance for the facility’s control and safety systems, as well as thousands of instruments and valves.
Two expert Emerson engineers onboard Prelude will work with other team members who remotely monitor the facility’s automation from Shell’s operations center in Perth.
Prelude is under construction in Geoje, South Korea, before moving to Australia to begin operations. The facility is expected to remain on station at least 25 years as Shell and its partners develop gas reserves in the Browse Basin’s Prelude and Concerto fields.