LNG

UK major Shell expects to take non-cash impairment charges of between $2.5 billion to $4.5Bln for the fourth quarter, mainly related to the Singapore refining and chemicals hub that Shell is seeking to sell off, though quarterly income attributable to shareholders was expected to remain at around $7 billion.

The US finished 2023 at the top of the liquefied natural gas exports league as shipments to Europe were ramped up to replace Russian volumes while Australia finished second because of maintenance, strikes and regulatory obstructions for future ventures and Qatar was in third place ahead of its massive expansion plans.

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.

Australian liquefied natural gas export revenues hit a record high of A$93 billion (US$60Bln) in the 2022-2023 fiscal year but are forecast to ease to A$71Bln in the current year as the spike in global energy prices set off by the Russia-Ukraine war unwinds.

The largest European energy major Shell posted a 47 percent drop in overall quarterly profits, reflecting lower LNG trading and optimisation results and a drop in oil and gas prices as well as refining margins.

Shell has again suspended production at the “Prelude” floating LNG facility offshore northwest Australia because of an electric trip, an issue that had previously led to long shutdowns for safety investigations.

Shell Plc, Europe’s largest energy company, has issued a first-quarter 2023 earnings forecast update with higher natural gas production and “higher uptime” at the Queensland Curtis LNG and Prelude FLNG plants in Australia.

UK major Shell plc posted the company’s highest ever annual profits helped by record natural gas prices as its LNG sales volumes also increased during the quarter and for the full year.

Jan 6 (LNGJ) - Shell Plc has updated its earnings forecast for Integrated Gas and the other divisions and sees lower liquefaction volumes in Australia. Shell said these lower volumes mainly reflected the longer than expected plant outage at the “Prelude FLNG” plant offshore northwest Australia and “operational issues” at the Queensland Curtis LNG export facility.

   Shell’s adjusted earnings in Integrated Gas will see pre-tax depreciation of $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion. Shell added that its Trading and Optimisation earnings in the fourth quarter were “expected to be significantly higher” compared with the third quarter of 2022. In the Upstream division production was expected to be between 1,825 and 1,925 kboe/d.

Inpex Corp., the Japanese developer of the Ichthys LNG export project in Australia, has turned its mind again to finding natural gas resources onshore Japan by starting exploratory drilling operations at the Minami-Nagaoka Gas Field in Niigata Prefecture.