Shell floats hull for world’s largest floating facility

MANILA, Philippines - The 488-meter long hull of Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) plant has been floated out of the dry dock at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) yard in Geoje, South Korea, where it 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 tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per annum to meet growing global demand.

“Making FLNG a reality is no simple feat. 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 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,” said Shell’s project and technology director Matthias Bichsel.

FLNG will allow Shell to produce natural gas at sea, turn it into LNG, 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 kilometers northeast 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. 

Shell is the operator of Prelude FLNG in joint venture with INPEX (17.5 percent), KOGAS (10 percent) and OPIC (five percent), working with long-term strategic partners Technip and Samsung Heavy Industries (the Technip Samsung consortium).