22 December 2022

Shell shut manufacturing from Prelude FLNG following a fireplace on board the large floating LNG vessel on 20 December.

Bloomberg broke the information of the incident, reporting {that a} “small fireplace” on the Prelude FLNG vessel was detected on the afternoon of 20 December and was “shortly contained utilizing a hand-held extinguisher”, in response to a Shell assertion.

Manufacturing from the power has been quickly halted, with no indication of when Prelude FLNG would resume operations. The ability has an annual nameplate capability of three.6 mta.

LNG cargoes solely started flowing from Prelude on 19 September, following a protracted employee motion.

The mammoth floating facility has been hampered by technical points because it produced its first industrial cargo in June 2019. In 2020, Shell was pressured to shut the unit for 11 months after {an electrical} journey led to a collection of intensive investigations and repairs.

Prelude was shut down following a fireplace on 2 December 2021. NOPSEMA mentioned the hearth resulted in a lack of energy on the unit, resulting in an intermittent electrical provide over the next three days as efforts have been made to revive the ability provide. It was solely cleared to open by NOPSEMA in March 2022.

The operator restarted manufacturing in April at a time when patrons worldwide, and notably in Europe, have been alternate options to exchange Russian fuel provides as Russia threatens to retaliate in opposition to Western nations following its invasion of Ukraine by utterly shutting off piped fuel provides to the EU.

Australia ended 2021 as the world’s prime LNG producer and the main exporter of LNG to China, delivering 32M tonnes in 2021. This represented an increase of seven.1% over 2020.

Situated roughly 475 km northeast of Broome in Western Australia, Prelude FLNG is operated by Shell in a three way partnership with Inpex (17.5%), Kogas (10%) and OPIC (5%).

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