Writing New History
Samsung Heavy Industries has succeeded in completing the world's largest floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG), which is longer than four soccer fields laid end-to-end, writing a new history of the global offshore plant industry.
The company announced on June 29 that it has completed the building of Prelude FLNG, which is 488 meters long and 74 meters wide. Samsung Heavy had won the Prelude FLNG project from global energy firm Royal Dutch Shell in 2011 at the cost of US$3.4 billion (3.89 trillion won) by forming a consortium with France's engineering firm Technip.
The Prelude FLNG left Samsung Heavy's Geoje shipyard earlier in the day for use off waters near the Prelude gas field in the Browse LNG Basin, about 475 kilometers north-east of Broome in Australia. For the next 25 years, the facility is expected to produce 3.6 million tons of LNG, 1.3 million tons of natural-gas condensate, and 400,000 tons of liquefied natural gas (LPG) a year.
The Prelude FLNG outclasses existing offshore facilities in terms of size. The facility has storage tanks with a total capacity of 455,000 cubic meters, which is equivalent to around 175 Olympic swimming pools. When the storage tank is full, it weighs 600,000 tons, which is equivalent to six aircraft carriers. Samsung Heavy plans to make the best use of its technical know-how from the project in a US$2.5 billion (2.87 trillion won) Coral South project, Mozambique's first offshore field development, won earlier this month. The company has received three out of four new FLNG orders commissioned around the world so far.