Prelude floating LNG facility sails toward Australia

(OGJ Online, June 30, 2017). The Prelude floating LNG (FLNG) facility is en route from its construction site in South Korea to offshore Western Australia, a 5,800-km trip that should take about a month. Led by tugboats, the vessel left the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard in Geoje, said operator Royal Dutch Shell PLC. It was constructed by Technip Samsung Consortium. It’s the largest offshore floating facility ever built, said partner Inpex Corp. Prelude measures 488 m in length and 74 m in width. Once it arrives at the Prelude natural gas field, the facility will be secured by preinstalled mooring chains lifted from the seabed. The Prelude facility will then undergo hook-up and commissioning, and start producing. The facility will be installed on Block WA-44-L, about 475 km north-northeast of Broome. Prelude FLNG’s peak capacity is 3.6 million tonnes/year of LNG, 400,000 tpy of LPG, and 36,000 b/d of condensate. Shell Australia has 67.5% and Inpex has 17.5%. Other partners are Kogas Prelude Pty. Ltd. with 10% and Overseas Petroleum & Investment Corp. with 5%.

Rosneft states that the company may seek to build an LNG plant in the Far East based on its own gas

(MOSCOW, June 29, Reuters). Rosneft VP, Vlada Rusakova, said on Thursday the company was looking at building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Russia’s Far East using exclusively its own resources and gas reserves. Rosneft and U.S. energy firm Exxon have previously talked about building an LNG plant in Russia’s far east together, using gas from the Sakhalin-1 project in which both firms have a stake.

Rusakova said building a plant with Exxon still featured in Rosneft’s plans, but her suggestion that Rosneft could go it alone reflects the company’s growing ambitions, especially in Asia. Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin, one of the most influential businessmen in Russia, has said his firm plans to become the world’s third-largest producer of gas early next decade. Rosneft has been lobbying for access to a gas pipeline to China being built by Gazprom, which currently has a monopoly on Russian pipeline gas exports. It said on Thursday it was looking at cooperating with Beijing Gas in Russia’s far east and east Siberia in exploration, production of hydrocarbons and gas marketing.

Australia’s North West Shelf LNG facility hit by Karratha plant outage

LONDON, June 28 (Reuters) – Work to restart production at Australia’s Woodside-operated Karratha Gas Plant, which hosts the North West Shelf liquefied natural gas (LNG) export project, is underway following a partial outage on June 24, a spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman declined to comment on whether LNG exports have been affected. Industry sources, however, said the outage had affected LNG exports and was helping to support spot LNG prices in Asia LNG-AS, which have been on a downward trend for months.