Shell tests Prelude FLNG’s loading arms (VIDEO)

Join engineer Cris Moreno as he travels to France to see Prelude’s innovative offloading arms tested for the first time. Cris Moreno has a big job on his hands.

His task is to make sure Shell’s Prelude FLNG project can transfer its liquid cargo in one of the loneliest places on the planet; 200km’s off the north-west coast of Australia.

It took thousands of hours to develop the technology needed to deliver the challenge, but Cris is finally ready to test these ‘arms of innovation’ for the first time.

The 488-metre-long-hull of Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility was floated out of the dry dock in December last year at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) yard in Geoje, South Korea, where the facility is currently under construction.

Prelude is expected to produce 3.6 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of LNG, 1.3 mtpa of condensate and 0.4 mtpa of LPG, and to remain on location for approximately 25 years.

The Prelude FLNG hull is longer than four soccer fields laid end to end and it is longer than the Empire State Building is tall. The LNG storage tanks have a capacity equivalent to approximately 175 Olympic swimming pools.

Once complete, the FLNG facility will weigh more than 600,000 tonnes fully loaded, displacing the same amount of water as six of the world’s largest aircraft carriers. Whilst the Prelude facility is big it is also small – taking up 1/4 the area of an equivalent onshore LNG plant.