LNG

UK-based major Shell is completing a fourth-month maintenance turnaround of the “Prelude FLNG” production vessel that operates off the northwest coast of Australia and which has suffered shutdown over the last few years because of technical issues as well as industrial unrest among workers.

The FLNG vessel is moored 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of the town of Broome on Western Australia’s Kimberley coast and has 3.6 million tonnes per annum of production capacity.

Shell has attempted to tackle some long-term technical issues at the facility with maintenance and work that started in August 2023.

Demand window

“Prelude FLNG” will be coming back on stream to capture the winter demand surge in Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan.

The LNG carrier “Symphonic Breeze” is expected at the “Prelude FLNG” production hull early in December.

Shipping data showed that the “Symphonic Breeze” departed from the Japanese port of Naoetsu on November 23 with the destination of the vessel with 145,500 cubic metres capacity given as the Shell export facility.

Prelude FLNG has suffered several outages since it started production in June 2019, including a fire that led to a full power loss in December 2021 and several other automatic shut-downs because of fire alarms going off.

“Prelude is a complex facility in a remote offshore location,” said Shell in a statement.

“This is its first major turnaround and we continue to work through the process methodically taking as much time as required to ensure safe execution of all activities,” said the London-headquartered company.

“During the turnaround, additional scopes of work were identified and a decision made to extend maintenance to complete these scopes ahead of restart,” Shell added.

Feed gas

For the Shell project, the Concerto gas field and the nearby Prelude field provide the feed gas for the LNG and the new Crux field is also being developed.

The “Prelude” joint venture is owned 67.5 percent by Shell and 17.5 percent by Inpex Corp. of Japan, operator of the Australian Ichthys project from where the carrier the “Symphonic Breeze” has lifted many cargoes for Japan.

The Inpex Ichthys plant is located at Bayden Point in the Northern Territory of Australia, close to the Darwin LNG plant operated by Santos.

The Santos facility is seeking to bring on stream more feed gas from the Barossa gas project.

A further 10 percent of “Prelude” is held by the South Korean LNG buyer Korea Gas Corp. and 5 percent by CPC Corp. of Taiwan.

Gaztransport and Technigaz (GTT), the French liquefied natural gas storage technology company, said it received an order for tanks designs for 17 vessels from the South Korea shipyard HD Hyundai Heavy Industries on behalf of a leading LNG player, revealed earlier as QatarEnergy.

Chinese liquefied natural gas imports increased last month by 30 percent as energy demand recovered because of lower prices and more regasification capacity has come on line, including in Hong Kong.

Chinese liquefied natural gas imports last month dropped by more than 28 percent and the fall was partially offset by a 26 percent year-on-year increase in pipeline gas imports from nations such as Turkmenistan and Russia.

Malaysia’s national energy company Petronas has signed a sales and purchase agreement for an LNG tank filling facility at Sarawak, the Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, for onward shipment to China in ISO containers.

March 26 (LNGJ) - China will be unloading at least three LNG shipments in the days ahead. The 174,100  cubic metres capacity carrier “Cesi Lianyungang” will be unloading a cargo at the Qingdao terminal in eastern Shandong province from Australia-Pacific LNG at Gladstone in Queensland where terminal owner Sinopec is a shareholder. The 147,000 cubic metres capacity vessel “Min Lu” will deliver a cargo on March 26 to CNOOC’s Fujian terminal from the BP-operated Tangguh plant in Indonesia. The 147,000 cubic metres capacity “Dapeng Moon” will then discharge a shipment on March 29 at the CNOOC Shenzhen Diefu regasification facility from the Woodside Dampier export terminal in Western Australia.