Shell Prelude FLNG Project: Biggest Man Made Floating Structure

On May 20, 2011 Shell decided to go ahead with the Prelude FLNG Project - which will be the largest man made floating structure in the world. Shell has began building the floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility off the coast of Australia. The project site, Browse Basin, is situated near to the site of gas field. The structure to be built 100% by Shell will be 250 meters tall and boast production capacity of 5.3 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of liquids: 3.6 mtpa of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate and 0.4 mtpa of LPG. The key contractor in this project is Technip/Samsung Heavy Industries Consortium.

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Shell stated that over 1.6 million man hours have been invested in Front End Engineering and Design (FEED), which is one of the first phases of Prelude FLNG project. Shell expects the time frame of 10 years for the first production of LNG. The company discovered Prelude gas field in 2007. The floating structure will be used to reduce the temperature of natural gas to –162°C. At this temperature, the volume of natural gas shrinks to about 600 times making it easier to ship to customers in various parts of the world.

The prelude FLNG structure will be 488 meter long and 74 meter wide. It will displace about 600,000 tonnes of water. The choice of Samsung was obvious for this project as it owns one of the few ship yards in the world at South Korea to built a structure of such magnitude. The structure, once built will be towed to the project site, about 475 kilometers away. The design engineers have built the structure strong enough to withstand most power tropical storms. The structure will not need inspection and overhaul for at least 25 years of its operation.

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