Floating Platform for Gas & CCS?

Shell’s plan to build a $US5 billion floating liquefied natural gas plant off the West Australian coast will be a ”real game-changer” and spur on a spate of similar projects. It would provide 20% fewer emissions than an onshore project and could incorporate carbon capture and storage if it can be proven at a commercial scale.

Mathew Murphy for Sydney Morning Herald (9 October 2009):

SHELL predicts its plan to build a $US5 billion ($5.5 billion) floating liquefied natural gas plant off the West Australian coast will be a ”real game-changer” and spur on a spate of similar projects.

The oil group says it will develop the Prelude and Concerto gas fields in the Browse Basin, 450 kilometres north-east of Broome, subject to a final investment decision. The former is already in the front-end engineering and design phase.

About 3.5 million tonnes of LNG a year will be processed at the floating facility over the project life of more than 20 years. The facility, 480 metres long, 75 metres wide and 600,000 tonnes in weight, will be ”the largest vessel in the world”.

Shell plans to anchor it to the seabed and design it to survive a one-in-10,000-year cyclone.

Malcolm Brinded, Shell’s executive director of upstream international, suggested a floating facility could be used for its Sunrise joint venture in the Timor Sea, which will be operated by Woodside.

”It is our view that this technology is one where you want to design one and build many because we see economies of scale in doing that,” he said. ”We think this will be the first and that blazes the trail for subsequent ones. The design work that is going on is for a generic one that is adaptable for a range of conditions … it would indeed be quite straightforward to adapt for Sunrise.”

Japan’s Inpex wants to develop its Abadi field in Indonesia with a floating facility, and Santos recently formed a venture with GDF Suez to build a platform near Shell’s Prelude field.

These type of projects are seen as attractive because they allow gas fields previously considered uneconomic to be developed from a floating plant, which strips out some of the high capital costs.

Mr Brinded said Shell was still assessing the total gas in the two fields but was confident of producing 3.5 million tonnes a year as well as condensate and LPG.

He said the floating plant would provide 20 per cent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than an onshore project and that Shell would consider applying carbon capture and storage if it can be proven at a commercial scale.

A final investment decision is not expected until 2011 and first gas ”a few years after” that. A draft environmental impact statement will be made public on Monday.In July Shell awarded a contract to build a floating LNG facility, with options for another nine over the next 15 years.

The Minister for Resources, Martin Ferguson, said it would unlock more gas. ”A CSIRO report last year estimated Australian stranded gas reserves to be around 140 trillion cubic feet and worth around $1 trillion,” he said.

Source: www.smh.com.au