Shell’s Prelude FLNG will be the largest floating facility ever built. (Credit: Royal Dutch Shell plc)The 488-meter-long (1601 ft.) hull of Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility has been floated out of the dry dock at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) yard in Geoje, South Korea, where the facility is currently under construction.
Once complete, Prelude FLNG will be the largest floating facility ever built. It will unlock new energy resources offshore and produce approximately 3.6 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year to meet growing demand.
“Making FLNG a reality is no simple feat,” said Matthias Bichsel, Shell Projects&Technology Director. “A project of this complexity—both in size and ingenuity—harnesses the best of engineering, design, manufacturing and supply chain expertise from around the world. Getting to this stage of construction, given that we only cut the first steel a year ago, is down to the expert team we have ensuring that the project’s critical dimensions of safety, quality, cost and schedule are delivered.”
Once complete, the facility will have decks measuring 488 by 74 meters (1601 by 243 ft.), the length of more than four soccer fields. With its cargo tanks full it will weigh roughly six times as much as the largest aircraft carrier. More than 600 people around the world spent over 1.6 million hours working on different design options for the facility.
FLNG will allow Shell to produce natural gas at sea, turn it into liquefied natural gas and then transfer it directly to the ships that will transport it to customers. It will 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. This can mean faster, cheaper, more flexible development and deployment strategies for resources that were previously uneconomic, or constrained by technical or other risks.
Prelude FLNG is the first deployment of Shell’s FLNG technology and will operate in a remote basin around 475 kilometres north-east of Broome, Western Australia for around 25 years. The facility will remain onsite during all weather events, having been designed to withstand a category 5 cyclone.
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