Floating liquefied natural gas

Floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) refers to water-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations employing technologies designed to enable the development of offshore natural gas resources. Floating above an offshore natural gas field, the FLNG facility produces, liquefies, stores and transfers LNG (and potentially LPG and condensate) at sea before carriers ship it directly to markets. The world's first completed FLNG production facility is the PFLNG Satu located in Kanowit gas field off the shore of Sarawak in Malaysia. Petronas is the owner of the platform and first cargo was loaded onto the 150,200-cbm Seri Camellia LNG carrier on 03 April 2017. Multiple other FLNG facilities are in development. Another FLNG facility, developed by Exmar NV using Black & Veatch PRICO(R) technology, passed performance test in October 2016 in Nantong, China. Fortuna FLNG, to be commissioned in 2020, owned by a joint-venture between Ophir Energy and Golar LNG is still under development in Equatorial Guinea, the US$2 billion vessel would be the first to produce its gas in Africa. The agreement between Equatorial Guinea and state-owned GEPetrol, Ophir and OneLNG reconfirms GEPetrol’s participation rights as partners in 20 per cent of the FLNG project. Studies into offshore LNG production have been conducted since the early 1970s, but it was only in the mid-1990s that significant research backed by experimental development began. In 1997, Mobil developed a FLNG production concept based on a large, square structure (540 by 540 feet (160 m × 160 m)) with a moonpool in the center,commonly known as 'The Doughnut'.The Mobil proposal was sized to produce 6,000,000 tonnes (6,600,000 tons) LNG per year produced from 7,400,000 cubic metres (260,000,000 cu ft) per year of feed gas, with storage provided on the structure for 250,000 cubic metres (66,000,000 US gal) of LNG and 103,000 cubic metres (27,000,000 US gal) of condensate. In 1999, a major study was commissioned as a joint project by Chevron Corporation and several other oil and gas companies. This was closely followed by the so-called 'Azure' research project, conducted by the EU and several oil and gas companies. Both projects made great progress in steel concrete hull design, topside development and LNG transfer systems. Since the mid-1990s Royal Dutch Shell has been working on its own FLNG technology. This includes engineering and the optimization of its concept related to specific potential project developments in Namibia, Timor Leste/Australia, and Nigeria. In July 2009, Royal Dutch Shell signed an agreement with Technip and Samsung allowing for the design, construction and installation of multiple Shell FLNG facilities. Petrobras invited three consortiums to submit proposals for engineering, procurement and construction contracts for FLNG plants in ultra-deep Santos Basin waters during 2009. A final investment decision was expected in 2011. As of November 2010, Japan's Inpex planned to leverage FLNG to develop the Abadi gas field in the Masela block of the Timor Sea, with a final investment decision expected by the end of 2013. Late in 2010, Inpex deferred start-up by two years to 2018 and cut its 'first phase' capacity to 2.5 million tons per year (from a previously proposed capacity of 4.5 million tonnes).