Shell Built a Floating Cathedral to Gas – Then Spent Years Praying the Lights Stay On

Let’s talk about Shell’s Prelude FLNG, a.k.a. the biggest corporate midlife-crisis purchase ever parked on the ocean. Shell didn’t just build a platform; they launched a 488-meter-long, 74-meter-wide, 600,000-tonne floating factory that maritime media straight-faced called “the largest offshore structure ever built”—and, yes, “it displaces six times as much water as the largest aircraft carrier.” 

Anchored some 475 km (295 miles) off Australia, Prelude was moored with 16 giant chains to a 93-meter turret—“secured to the seabed by mooring lines”—so the behemoth could spin with cyclones and still keep pumping. Very metal. Very expensive. And very on-brand for a company that thinks the solution to climate and cost risk is… more steel. 

Shell’s sales pitch was simple: 3.6 million tonnes of LNG per year, plus LPG and condensate. First cargo sailed in June 2019. Cue the confetti. 

Then came reality.

In February 2020, Prelude suffered loss-of-power events that triggered multiple general alarms and a partial demobilisation. That wasn’t rumor; that was the regulator’s paperwork. 

In December 2021, a smoke incident in an electrical room cascaded into a full power loss. This is not me being dramatic; it’s Shell’s own initial notification to the regulator: “Total power loss on the Prelude FLNG. Alarm and muster, all personnel accounted for . . . 1st EDG started within 1 hour of power loss. 2nd EDG started within 3 hours of power loss.” The regulator later recorded that “four persons experienced heat related illnesses requiring medical treatment.” It also found that “throughout the unstable power period after the UPS fire the cumulative risk on the facility was significantly higher than normal,” and that “the robustness of the facility power system is inadequately understood.” Read that again—inadequately understood—about the power on a floating gas plant. 

Australia’s offshore safety watchdog (NOPSEMA) stepped in and ordered Shell to prove Prelude could safely recover from a power loss before restarting. When the order was finally marked closed in March 2022, Shell said, “Shell notes confirmation from NOPSEMA that Direction 1860 has been closed.” Translation: the world’s most expensive “unplug it and plug it back in” exercise is complete—for now. 

Smooth sailing after that? Please. In mid-2022, protected industrial action shut output and disrupted cargo loadings; Reuters noted Shell could not supply LNG cargoes during the stoppages. In 2023, Shell suspended production again due to “problems with its processes.” And industry reporting later revealed Shell had even weighed a year-long shutdown to fix nagging issues—but opted for shorter downtime to catch the hot market instead. Priorities, priorities. 

About the “investment and engineering” bit. Was it worth it? Reuters put the tab at “over $12 billion,” and despite the colossal hardware (16 mooring chains, 93-meter turret, and chain links “among the largest ever manufactured”), Prelude has spent an awful lot of time proving it can keep the lights on without cooking its crew. If this is the template for offshore LNG, the template needs fewer press releases and more reliability. 

And who bankrolls this ultimate sin stock? The usual Wall Street Mount Rushmore. As of mid-2025, BlackRock was the top institutional holder (~8.5%), with Vanguard next (~5.3%). Norges Bank Investment Management (Norway’s sovereign wealth fund) also ranks among the biggest. In short: the index-fund industrial complex loves Shell, and Shell loves sending them dividends from a floating headache in cyclone alley. 

Here’s the punchline: Shell built a leviathan that looks unbeatable on a glossy slide deck—“16 pre-positioned mooring chains… 93-meter high turret… ride out even the strongest cyclones”—and then spent years wrestling with the one system that matters more than all the swaggering stats: basic, resilient power. When your regulator writes that risk was “significantly higher than normal” and your own incident log reads like a blackout bingo card, maybe the “what the f***” isn’t the critics—it’s the project governance. 

So, is Prelude a dawn or a dud? It’s both an engineering marvel and a case study in overreach: a floating monument to the idea that if you make it big enough, nature will blink first. Spoiler: it didn’t.

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