OCTOBER 19, 2012 — Shell yesterday celebrated the cutting of first steel at Samsung Heavy Industries' Geoje shipyard in South Korea for the substrucure of what will be the largest offshore floating facility ever built: The Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility.

When completed, the Prelude FLNG facility will be 488 m long and 74 m wide.When fully equipped and with its cargo tanks full, it will weigh more than 600,000 tonnes. There will be over 3,000 km of electrical and instrumentation cables on the FLNG facility, the distance from Barcelona to Moscow.

The Prelude FLNG facility will be deployed in Australian waters over 200 kilometers from the nearest point on the coast. It will produce gas at sea, turn it into LNG and then transfer it directly to the ships that will transport it to customers

Shell's Projects & Technology Director Matthias Bichsel commented: "We are cutting 7.6 tonnes of steel for the Prelude floating liquefied natural gas facility, but in total, more than 260,000 tonnes of steel will be fabricated and assembled for the facility. That's around five times the amount of steel used to build the Sydney Harbor Bridge.

"Making FLNG a reality is no simple feat," Matthias continued. "Shell is uniquely positioned to make it a success given our commercial capability; our LNG, offshore, deepwater and marine technology; and our proven ability to successfully deliver megaprojects."

An expert team from Shell will manage the multi-year construction of the FLNG facility to ensure the Prelude project's critical dimensions of safety, quality, cost and schedule are delivered. Strategic partners Technip and Samsung Heavy Industries (the Technip Samsung Consortium) along with SBM and hundreds of suppliers and contractors around the world are all contributing knowledge, skills and equipment to help make the project a success. At peak levels, around 5,000 people will be working on the construction of the FLNG facility in South Korea; and another 1,000 will build the turret mooring system, subsea and wells equipment in other locations across the globe.

In the lead up to the facility being ready to start production, a number of actions will take place, such as drilling the production wells, installation of subsea flowlines and risers and mooring chains to prepare for the arrival of the FLNG facility.

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