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Released August 26, 2015 | SUGAR LAND
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Researched by Industrial Info Resources Australia (Perth, Australia)--Prelude is a buzz word in the Oil & Gas Industry. Royal Dutch Shell plc's (Shell) (NYSE:RDS.A) (The Hague, Netherlands) Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) project is exciting; it is a technological breakthrough, a feat of amazement, massive in everyone's eyes.
The Prelude buzz will wear off after first quarter 2017, when the facility is due to start up. Shell began working on FLNG technology in 1998. Once the natural gas reserves had proven worthy of commercialization, Shell continued to define the concept and set about convincing Australia's environmental regulatory bodies that FLNG production was possible and safe. The Australian federal government approved the project in November 2010. A final investment decision (FID) was reached in May 2011, and off-site construction of the Prelude FLNG facility began in September 2012 at the Geoje Shipyard in Korea.
Construction has been a success, and the project is on schedule for completion by early 2017. The Prelude FLNG facility will be deployed in Australian waters more than 200 kilometers from the nearest point on the coast.
Woodside Petroleum Limited's (Perth, Australia) Browse FLNG Project development also is moving along nicely. At least two FLNG facilities will be built to produce 3 million tonnes per year of LNG per vessel at a minimum, with the potential for a third facility highly likely, once success has been realized on the first two, known as "BWA" and "BWB." The third facility is, of course, known as BWC.
Reports have been updated many times in the past few months to recognize a list of project milestones for Browse FLNG: transition from preliminary front-end engineering and design (pre-FEED) into FEED phase; contract award to a Technip Incorporated (Paris, France) and Samsung Heavy Industries (Seoul, South Korea) joint venture (the same team building the Prelude FLNG facility); subsea development contracts awarded to Wood Group Kenny (Aberdeen, Scotland) and OneSubsea (Houston, Texas); and the provision by the Australian federal government of conditional environmental approval.
Five years ago, the benefits of the FLNG concept over land-based, large-scale LNG production were extolled across the globe. Inaccessible gas fields of any size can be commercialized without need of a long and expensive subsea pipeline. The environmental footprint is halved and the general population has half of the amount of reasons to complain about a facility that is offshore, out-of-sight, out-of-mind, minus the land-based eyesore heavily influencing the social fabric of rural life. Possibly the biggest virtue of the FLNG technology is the lower cost of project development.
Now everyone is waiting to see how Prelude goes in the operational phase. Operations will require 120-140 personnel; 340 people will be sent offshore during heavy maintenance on the facility. The operational workforce is being recruited and will be ready for start-up and simulation training beginning this year. Long-term service agreements are being put in place for provision of services to support operation of the Prelude FLNG. An estimated 200 or more operations and maintenance contracts are expected to be awarded by 2016.
There are a multitude of major players in the natural gas industry from around the world that are sitting back, waiting and watching--to confirm the success of Prelude in operation. They also are sitting out these tough times, watching the price of oil and waiting for market conditions to improve.
ENGIE (Paris, France) and Santos Limited (Adelaide, South Australia) recently changed the concept of the Bonaparte Project. They've looked at FLNG plans very similar to the Prelude and Browse projects, then investigated scrapping FLNG to opt for a subsea development to supply natural gas via pipeline to an existing LNG export/domestic gas processing plant in the Darwin area, Northern Territory. Bonaparte Project proponents recently reverted back to the FLNG idea, but are looking into whether a barge-based vessel design, with production capacity of 2 million tonnes per year, installed in shallow water near the Northern Territory shoreline, would work for them.
Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) (Irving, Texas) and BHP Billiton Petroleum (NYSE:BHP) (Melbourne, Australia) have spent a decade looking at different options for commercializing the Scarborough, Thebe and Jupiter fields. Originally tipped to be the next-big-thing in LNG after the Gorgon project, the Scarborough LNG production project was to be a huge land-based LNG plant, constructed in the vicinity of the Wheatstone Project (under construction) at the Ashburton Industrial Precinct, near Onslow in Western Australia. However, the project owners decided, after engaging engineering firms to assess their best options, that the FLNG was definitely a superior concept in terms of economics and appeal to environmental authorities. Numerous engineering firms have now been enlisted to perform pre-FEED studies on FLNG and associated subsea works.
The story is similar for Woodside for the Browse LNG project. In April 2013, after the Australian federal government had finally given the green light on the project, Woodside announced that it (and project equity participants) would not be going ahead with the project, as it was not economically viable. Feasibility studies had determined that the project would simply cost too much--estimated at about AU$80 billion ($57 billion).
Conditional environmental approval has been granted for most of these projects. The most recent to be sanctioned by the Australian federal government, subject to 26 conditions, was the massive Browse FLNG project, on August 17.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.
The Prelude buzz will wear off after first quarter 2017, when the facility is due to start up. Shell began working on FLNG technology in 1998. Once the natural gas reserves had proven worthy of commercialization, Shell continued to define the concept and set about convincing Australia's environmental regulatory bodies that FLNG production was possible and safe. The Australian federal government approved the project in November 2010. A final investment decision (FID) was reached in May 2011, and off-site construction of the Prelude FLNG facility began in September 2012 at the Geoje Shipyard in Korea.
Construction has been a success, and the project is on schedule for completion by early 2017. The Prelude FLNG facility will be deployed in Australian waters more than 200 kilometers from the nearest point on the coast.
Woodside Petroleum Limited's (Perth, Australia) Browse FLNG Project development also is moving along nicely. At least two FLNG facilities will be built to produce 3 million tonnes per year of LNG per vessel at a minimum, with the potential for a third facility highly likely, once success has been realized on the first two, known as "BWA" and "BWB." The third facility is, of course, known as BWC.
Reports have been updated many times in the past few months to recognize a list of project milestones for Browse FLNG: transition from preliminary front-end engineering and design (pre-FEED) into FEED phase; contract award to a Technip Incorporated (Paris, France) and Samsung Heavy Industries (Seoul, South Korea) joint venture (the same team building the Prelude FLNG facility); subsea development contracts awarded to Wood Group Kenny (Aberdeen, Scotland) and OneSubsea (Houston, Texas); and the provision by the Australian federal government of conditional environmental approval.
Five years ago, the benefits of the FLNG concept over land-based, large-scale LNG production were extolled across the globe. Inaccessible gas fields of any size can be commercialized without need of a long and expensive subsea pipeline. The environmental footprint is halved and the general population has half of the amount of reasons to complain about a facility that is offshore, out-of-sight, out-of-mind, minus the land-based eyesore heavily influencing the social fabric of rural life. Possibly the biggest virtue of the FLNG technology is the lower cost of project development.
Now everyone is waiting to see how Prelude goes in the operational phase. Operations will require 120-140 personnel; 340 people will be sent offshore during heavy maintenance on the facility. The operational workforce is being recruited and will be ready for start-up and simulation training beginning this year. Long-term service agreements are being put in place for provision of services to support operation of the Prelude FLNG. An estimated 200 or more operations and maintenance contracts are expected to be awarded by 2016.
There are a multitude of major players in the natural gas industry from around the world that are sitting back, waiting and watching--to confirm the success of Prelude in operation. They also are sitting out these tough times, watching the price of oil and waiting for market conditions to improve.
ENGIE (Paris, France) and Santos Limited (Adelaide, South Australia) recently changed the concept of the Bonaparte Project. They've looked at FLNG plans very similar to the Prelude and Browse projects, then investigated scrapping FLNG to opt for a subsea development to supply natural gas via pipeline to an existing LNG export/domestic gas processing plant in the Darwin area, Northern Territory. Bonaparte Project proponents recently reverted back to the FLNG idea, but are looking into whether a barge-based vessel design, with production capacity of 2 million tonnes per year, installed in shallow water near the Northern Territory shoreline, would work for them.
Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) (Irving, Texas) and BHP Billiton Petroleum (NYSE:BHP) (Melbourne, Australia) have spent a decade looking at different options for commercializing the Scarborough, Thebe and Jupiter fields. Originally tipped to be the next-big-thing in LNG after the Gorgon project, the Scarborough LNG production project was to be a huge land-based LNG plant, constructed in the vicinity of the Wheatstone Project (under construction) at the Ashburton Industrial Precinct, near Onslow in Western Australia. However, the project owners decided, after engaging engineering firms to assess their best options, that the FLNG was definitely a superior concept in terms of economics and appeal to environmental authorities. Numerous engineering firms have now been enlisted to perform pre-FEED studies on FLNG and associated subsea works.
The story is similar for Woodside for the Browse LNG project. In April 2013, after the Australian federal government had finally given the green light on the project, Woodside announced that it (and project equity participants) would not be going ahead with the project, as it was not economically viable. Feasibility studies had determined that the project would simply cost too much--estimated at about AU$80 billion ($57 billion).
Conditional environmental approval has been granted for most of these projects. The most recent to be sanctioned by the Australian federal government, subject to 26 conditions, was the massive Browse FLNG project, on August 17.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.
