Speculation by retired Shell experts: Is all well with the Shell Prelude FLNG Project?
There have been past dire warnings about potential safety issues relating to the Shell Prelude FLNG Project, including from a knowledgable insider source, who supplied information and photographic evidence to support various allegations.
The LNG tanker Gallina visited Prelude in Mid April, and again in June, with transfer of LNG for purpose of cooling tanks etc, nothing unusual there other than it seems to be taking an awful long time.
Also here is a Project falling over itself in the early days to tell the world how wonderful things were going, but now there appears no update news at all on how the commissioning is going?
Have they got a problem(s), that they are keeping stumm about?
For example, a problem could have come from the inflow contents of the gas wells when they were opened up, maybe not cleaned up properly?
Surprisingly, the Australian press have not been pushing for input from Shell Australia, after all, this is a 12 billion plus project and waiting on the chilled liquid product (revenue rather than outgoings) is a bit like waiting for Godo.
RELATED COMMENT
It looks like Prelude has 19 helicopter fights per week. All of them are routed to the “Posh Arcaida” which is an accommodation vessel with up to 750 beds on board.
An article I read dated 17th March indicated that more than 17,500 people had been moved by helicopter since arrival.
Currently CHC Helicopters are scheduling up to 19 flights a week. That may equate to about 360 each way or a total of around 750 people. I think this may indicate the potential panic at the “slow startup”. I wonder what the contractual LNG delivery dates were to be and if any cargos have had to have been bought by Shell on the open market.
Link to the helicopter operators web site
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ARTICLE: Prelude FLNG: A case of all your eggs in the one basket: 10 July 2014
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ARTICLE: SpaceShip Two: Shell Prelude another pioneering venture fraught with risk: 2 November 2014
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