Prelude floating LNG giant still offline after two months

Shell working to address safety concerns and restart production on giant offshore LNG ship

2 April 2020 4:52 GMT UPDATED 2 April 2020 4:54 GMT

By Russell Searancke in Wellington

The Shell-led Prelude floating liquefied natural gas project off Western Australia continues to be offline nearly two months after production was shut down due to safety concerns.

FULL ARTICLE (SUBSCRIPTION REQUIRED))

The Prelude first received gas from its subsea wells in December 2018 and by the end of June 2019 had produced 2.32 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, according to emissions data released by the Clean Energy Regulator today.

Conservation Council of WA director Piers Verstegen said the emissions data was absolutely shocking and suggested that Shell was making no effort to reduce Prelude’s emissions. read more

Guest article

(Photo source)

Climate change is one of the biggest concerns of humanity right now. Never in history, such changes have occurred so quickly and led to the results they do now. Today, the consequences of a hurricane over the Caribbean islands can be felt in Australia. The entire world is affected like never before.

Greta Thunberg has made it common for young people to speak about climate change with adults. Student engagement in pro-climate movements has largely increased. It is not purely research work that evaluates the impact of changes. Such a job can be done by professionals from EssayPro.com Customer Research Paper Writing. It is more about taking a proactive position to prevent such changes from happening. read more

Prelude to remain shut three more weeks: regulator

18 February 2020

THE Prelude, Shell’s flagship floating LNG vessel moored offshore Western Australia, will remain shut down “for at least three weeks from Wednesday February 12,” the offshore regulator has told Energy News, based on information from Shell.

* No timeframe for resuming output at Shell’s Prelude FLNG

* Outage keeps Prelude LNG off amid market glut (Adds background on Prelude)

MELBOURNE, Feb 18 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell has temporarily suspended cargo liftings from its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility off northwest Australia while it works to restore production following an electrical trip on Feb. 2.

“Work continues to restore full operations on Prelude, our floating LNG facility in Australia,” the energy giant said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. read more

NEWS REPORT: Offshore Alliance claim Shell’s Prelude FLNG thrusters broken

Extract

UNION Members from the Offshore Alliance have claimed Shell’s massive Prelude FLNG vessel offshore Western Australia suffered maintenance issues to two of its thrusters.

RELATED COMMENTS FROM “AN OLD SHELL E&P ENGINEERING SEA DOG”

I am having difficulties understanding why there are such extensive difficulties with the main power plant reliability?

I understand the steam-driven power plant consisting of several boilers supplying steam turbine driven generators of around 100 megawatts, quite a high figure so at least 4 or 5 boilers and generator sets. These boilers are designed to be dual fired using fuel gas or diesel. If gas supply fails, change over to diesel automatically takes place or should do. We know this because LNG was introduced on board to initially cool the LNG storage tanks down and the boil-off would be used as fuel for the boilers saving expensive diesel and reduce harmful emissions. read more

Use your browser to enlarge image

LATEST BILL CAMPBELL THOUGHTS ON PRELUDE EMERGENCY SHUT DOWN

John

It looks like the content of your web pages have contributed to a better understanding of the troubles of this project, at one time heralded as the shining city on the hill.

It seems reading between the lines that the power problems, the terrible PR, the fall in the LNG price etc, but particularly that they could not continue working on the plant intrusively with inadequate isolation, are all factors. 

Perhaps this is a chance to remedy what appears to be a significant amount of defects including defective process isolation and venting in the design, inaccurate drawings P&IDs etc and incorrect identification of equipment – as an example the RV being replaced was wrongly tagged. read more

Prelude shutdown

OPERATION of the world’s largest offshore facility, Shell’s embattled Prelude floating LNG vessel, has descended into chaos with back up power generation failing, cardboard potties issued to replace regular toilet facilities and a fleet of helicopters called in to reduce crew numbers.

05 February 2020

Only last week Shell chief executive Ben van Buerden told analysts the Prelude was evidence of how new assets would improve the gas giant’s cash flow in 2020. read more

Reaction to Shell’s temporary shut down of Prelude

The initial reaction from Bill Campbell

Trying to interpret what is going on is difficult because of lack of detail from journalist report so maybe misinterpreting what happened and my interpretation may be misguided, but… evidence if more is needed that something is wrong on this installation. read more

Commodities (Feb 04, 2020 08:09)

By Jessica Jaganathan and Sonali Paul

Production suspended on Feb. 2 -spokeswoman

* Work under way to restore full operations

* Impact on Asian spot prices to be minimal -traders (Adds details)

By Jessica Jaganathan and Sonali Paul

SINGAPORE/MELBOURNE, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell said on Tuesday it has temporarily suspended production at its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility off northwest Australia following an electrical trip on Feb. 2. read more

PRELUDE COMMENTS FROM “AN OLD SHELL E&P ENGINEERING SEA DOG”

With reference to the published info from Bill regarding the very serious operational shortcomings on the Prelude NGL vessel.

It may be worthwhile publishing the entire notice as if it read by senior people in the Hague central offices there may be a sounding of very loud alarm bells if not there should be as Prelude represents an enormous investment and a leap into the future.  The root cause of these issues requires to be identified and a root and branch analysis of how and why this state of affairs has been allowed to evolve, I believe it is a cumulative pressure from many sources over many months and not just the recent inspections, its much deeper than that. We can only speculate and read with a degree of horror the findings of the Australian Regulator. read more

By Bill Campbell

On 22 January past the Regulator wrote to Shell Australia with a direction, a mandatory notice requiring action by the Owner, because staff on Prelude FLNG were carrying out activities the risks of which were not being reduced to levels as low as reasonably practicable and thus there was a significant risk to the Health and Safety of persons on the facility.

In issuance of this direction, they took cognisance of three previous dangerous occurrences all resulting in a loss of containment, namely read more

Please read in conjunction with the recent comments made by Bill Campbell in the article Alarming warning to the Australian National Offshore Petroleum and Environmental Management Authority about Shell Prelude Project

By Bill Campbell

Hydrocarbon leaks an ever-present danger – the argument with respect to inevitability

HSE started in 1992 to record and classify dangerous occurrences including hydrocarbon releases. This was adopted as their principal technical integrity measure. In the circa quarter of a century from 1992 to 2015, for example, there were 4656 hydrocarbon releases on average 194 per annum. The latest data available is for 2018 where the number of releases was recorded at 96 per annum, so there has been a trend downwards but this should not be understood to be a significant improvement because the population number of installations in 1992 was larger than the number in 2018 due to installations being abandoned at end of life. In any case, the reality is that over the period 1992 to 2015 there was between 3 to 4 hydrocarbon releases per week and in 2018 there was approaching two hydrocarbon releases per week. This can not be viewed as a significant reduction in risk because hydrocarbon loss into the atmosphere, whether it be minor significant or major, are all classified as dangerous occurrences because of the potential of these incidents. read more

Alarming warning addressed to The Australian National Offshore Petroleum and Environmental Management Authority.

Bill Campbell

Please read the information below from retired Shell Global Safety Consultant, Bill Campbell about the fears of a loss of hydrocarbons from the Shell Prelude facility. His comments were triggered by the recent article on Prelude FLNG and the recent intervention and involvement of the Regulator

Preamble 

Some 30 years of government statistics from some 200 installations in U.K. waters demonstrate that despite it being the Regulator and the industries highest safety priority a significant number of dangerous occurrences re the loss of hydrocarbons has continued over this prolonged period. No one will or could argue on this conclusion based not on supposition but on historic data that there is and continues to be a certain inevitability that hydrocarbons will leak into the atmosphere. Subsequent ignition of these leaking hydrocarbons has the potential of loss of life or threats to the structure of the installation. read more

Shell issued direction from regulator over Prelude processes

SHELL Australia has been issued a direction from the national regulator over health and safety concerns at the Prelude floating LNG facility offshore northern Western Australia.

Paul Hunt: Senior Journalist: Oil & Gas, Policy. 29 Jan 2020

The Prelude FLNG facility produces natural gas from an offshore field approximately 475km north-north east of Broome and last weekend shipped its 15^th cargo of LNG.

This morning the National Offshore Petroleum and Environmental Management Authority (NOSPEMA) ordered Shell not to conduct “intrusive activities” to certain parts of the plant and equipment aboard the Prelude over fears there could be a loss of hydrocarbons from the facility.

There is no immediate threat or risk to workers or the environment. read more