Floating LNG - Groundbreaking Innovation Becoming a Reality

Abstract

While today's volatile business environment - including the global financial crisis; technological advancements, maturing 'easy gas' developments, heightened environmental scrutiny and an overheated construction market may have delayed FIDs for LNG projects, this same combination of forces and trends have led to the energy industry's renewed interest in Floating LNG (FLNG) and a growing belief that its time may have finally come, at least for a few of the interested parties and as evidenced by Shell taking FID on the Prelude FLNG Project in Australia. Floating liquefaction of natural gas or FLNG has captured the imagination of engineers and LNG business developers ever since it was first considered. The concept is simple, but attractive: "Let's put the LNG facilities directly over the offshore gas resource rather than processing and piping the gas long distances to onshore liquefaction facilities". FLNG has huge potential to extend the portfolio of traditional LNG concepts necessary to meet the energy challenge of the 21st century. Technological and commercial challenges may have prevented FLNG succeeding for a long time, as evidenced by the fact that there are no FLNG facilities currently in operation, but the world's first FID has been taken in May this year and the Prelude FLNG Project will move ahead through detailed design and construction over the next few years. The market circumstances, the environmental circumstances, and the technical maturity lead us to believe that Shell FLNG has now grown up to become a very serious gas monetisation option and that this first FID will not be the last. The technical concept of Shell FLNG with some of its key technical challenges, and the inherent safety approach applied throughout the design is described in this paper. The main focus is on some of the key technical challenges and choices made in the design.