Articles
Shell is to build the world‘s largest floating offshore facility, measuring an incredible 488 metres in length.
The Prelude Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) facility will be moored some 200 kilometres off the coast in Australia and will produce gas from offshore fields, and liquefy it onboard by cooling.
When fully equipped and with its storage tanks full, it will weigh around 600,000 tonnes – roughly six times as much as the largest aircraft carrier. Some 260,000 tonnes of that weight will consist of steel.
Malcolm Brinded, Shell‘s executive director, Upstream International, said: “This will allow us to develop offshore gas fields that otherwise would be too costly to develop. Our decision to go ahead with it will give the LNG industry a significant boost to help meet the world‘s growing demand for the cleanest-burning fossil fuel.”
The facility has been designed to withstand the severest cyclone - those of Category 5. Ocean-going LNG carriers will offload liquefied gas, chilled to minus162 Celsius and shrunk in volume by 600 times, and other products, directly from the facility out at sea for delivery to markets worldwide. Until now, the liquefaction of offshore gas has always involved piping the gas to a land-based plant.
The FLNG facility will tap around 3 trillion cubic feet equivalent of resources contained in the Prelude gas field off the coast of Australia. Shell discovered the Prelude gas field in 2007.
Some 110,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of expected production from Prelude should underpin at least 5.3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of liquids, comprising 3.6 mtpa of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate and 0.4 mtpa of liquefied petroleum gas. The FLNG facility will stay permanently moored at the Prelude gas field for 25 years, and in later development phases should produce from other fields in the area where Shell has an interest.