The most recent incident happened only a year after a similar fire forced the vessel to go down for nearly five months.

Shell’s Prelude FLNG Restarts First Cargo Since Fire

Zacks Equity Research: Mon, January 23, 2023 

Shell SHEL recently announced the restart of liquefied natural gas LNG cargoes from its Prelude floating LNG FLNG facility offshore Australia, following a temporary fire-related technical outage in December.

According to Shell, the fire was promptly put out and the area was declared safe; it also stated that no one was hurt and all of the facility’s workers were safe and well.

Following a small fire at the 3.6M metric tons/year facility, Prelude, the largest floating plant for natural gas liquefaction in the world, had paused its gas production last month due to an ongoing investigation. read more

Report: Output from Shell’s Prelude FLNG Shut Again

BY Bartolomej Tomic, managing editor of Offshore Engineer.

December 22, 2022

Shell has stopped production at its Prelude floating LNG plant off Western Australia after a fire.

A Shell spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday that the fire at the giant FLNG unit “was rapidly extinguished.”

The 488-meter-long, Shell-operated, Prelude FLNG unit forms part of an offshore development that produces natural gas from the remote namesake field, located approximately 475 km north-northeast of Broome in Western Australia. The Prelude is the world’s largest FLNG unit. read more

REUTERS

Shell, unions reach wage deal to end industrial action at Prelude FLNG

Sonali Paul: PUBLISHED AUG 23, 2022 09:48PM EDT

MELBOURNE — Shell and unions representing workers at its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility have reached a wage deal to end a long-running strike and restart production at the site off northwest Australia, they said on Wednesday.

Shell shut the 3.6 million-tonnes-a-year Prelude facility in July and told customers it would be unable to supply LNG for the duration of the protected industrial action, or strikes approved by Australia’s Fair Work Commission, over a wage dispute. read more

Shell to Stop Paying Prelude LNG Workers From Monday, After Industrial Action Extended

By Reuters: July 20, 2022, at 3:47 a.m.

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Shell Plc has told workers at its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility it will stop paying them as of Monday if they are not on site, a Shell spokesperson said on Wednesday. Shell was meeting with workers after their combined union, the Offshore Alliance, extended protected industrial action, which began 40 days ago, to Aug. 4, the spokesperson said. read more

THE TIMES

Shell shuts gas plant after strike

Shell has been forced to shut its troubled Prelude floating liquefied natural gas plant as workers escalate a strike over pay.

The oil and gas group was yesterday in the process of halting production at the plant off the coast of Australia after informing customers it would be unable to offload cargoes.

Shell had already been forced to reduce output from Prelude after workers at the floating plant went on strike last month.

The latest strike plans effectively prevent tankers being moored alongside the plant to offload cargoes and, with storage facilities on the plant nearing capacity, Shell was forced to shut down production. Strike action is expected to continue until July 21. read more

abc.net.au

Shell, Australian Workers Union in stalemate over Prelude dispute

ABC Kimberley / by Taylor Thompson- Fuller: 29 June 2022

Key points:

• A fresh round of industrial actions are set to hit Shell’s offshore gas facility Prelude next month

• Workers set to be transported to the facility on Wednesday were told to stand down

• A pay dispute between unions and the Anglo-Dutch company are at a stalemate

Shell has cancelled gas shipments from its offshore facility Prelude as an industrial dispute between unions and the Anglo-Dutch resources company come to a head.

Contractors set to fly out to the resources rig on Wednesday were told to stand down in response to the disagreement over pay increases, rostering and job security.

The dispute has also caused Shell to advise their customers they will be cancelling some gas shipments from the facility until mid-July. read more

Ukraine brands Shell ‘deplorable’ after accusing it of using an ‘accounting trick’ to keep buying Russian oil

By LUCY WHITE FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 21:54, 22 April 2022 | UPDATED: 09:52, 23 April 2022

Ukraine’s government has branded Shell ‘deplorable’ after accusing it of using an ‘accounting trick’ to keep buying Russian oil.

Officials in Kyiv said Western companies were continuing to ‘bankroll Putin’s war machine’ despite promising to cut ties with the Kremlin. read more

Yahoo!news

Shell to write off up to $5bn on Russia exit

Energy stalwart Shell (SHEL.L) has warned that its exit from Russia could cost it as much as $5bn (£3.8bn) in the first three months of this year.

Shell will write off between $4bn and $5bn in the value of its assets, but the post-tax impairments will not impact the company’s earnings, it said in an update ahead of its earnings announcement in May.

Thursday’s announcement offers a first glimpse of the potential financial hit to western oil companies withdrawing from the country following its invasion of Ukraine. read more

Global&Mail

Shell eyes major expansion of B.C. natural gas project

Brent Jang: 6 April 2022

Shell PLC SHEL-N is studying the feasibility of a major expansion for the LNG Canada joint venture in British Columbia, citing a surge in global demand for liquefied natural gas and the need for reliable new supplies.

Europe has been scrambling to reduce its dependence on natural gas from Russia since the invasion of Ukraine nearly six weeks ago, and countries in Asia want cleaner alternatives to coal. read more

The National

Shell’s gas profits ‘significantly’ boosted by energy crisis

Royal Dutch Shell said its natural gas trading business overcame supply disruptions to post “significantly higher” earnings for the fourth quarter compared with the previous three months amid record gas prices – but oil product sales were less buoyant.

The energy company said the “high liquid natural gas spot price environment” gave the company a boost, according to a trading update ahead of its fourth-quarter results on February 3, making it one of the few winners during the energy crisis gripping Britain and wider Europe. read more

ArgusMedia

Australia’s Prelude LNG faces indefinite shutdown

Published date: 28 December 2021

Production at the 3.6mn t/yr Prelude floating LNG project in the Browse basin offshore Western Australia (WA) will be halted until Shell demonstrates that its facility is able to operate safely in the event of power loss, Australia’s offshore security regulator said.

The National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (Nopsema) issued a notice to project owner and operator Shell on 23 December, instructing it to investigate the “incidents and associated consequences” that took place at the Prelude facility early this month and present a plan for all necessary corrective actions. read more

Shell says green power shift will lift need for Australia’s LNG

By Nick Toscano: March 26, 2021

The Australian boss of global energy giant Shell sees demand for liquefied natural gas exports continuing to grow until at least the late 2030s even as COVID-19 hastens the shift away from planet-warming fossil fuels.

Shell, which believes its oil output may have hit a peak in 2019 and is now likely to gradually decline, has revealed a brighter outlook for its liquefied natural gas (LNG) assets including those in Queensland and off Western Australia. read more

Shell resumes production at massive floating LNG plant

Article by Adam Duckett: 14JAN 2021

SHELL has resumed production of LNG from its huge floating processing plant – Prelude – following a series of project setbacks that halted output for almost a year.

The oil major said this week: “LNG cargoes have resumed from Shell’s Prelude FLNG facility.”

Shell repeated the statement it has made in response to a series of setbacks at the project, which at 488 m long is the largest ship ever built: “Prelude is a multi-decade project, and our focus remains on delivering sustained performance over the long-term.” read more

Shell resumes LNG shipments from world’s largest floating structure

Australia trims 2020-21 LNG export forecasts on COVID-19, production issues

• AuthorNathan Richardson 
• EditorAastha Agnihotri 
• CommodityNatural Gas

Sydney — Australia has cut forecasts for the country’s LNG exports for 2020-2021 (July-June) by some 6% to 75.6 million mt, citing the expected impacts of both the COVID-19 pandemic and domestic technical issues.

If realized, the forecast for the current fiscal would see volumes fall by 3.7 million mt year on year. They are expected to recover in 2021-2022 to 80.1 million mt, the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources said Sept. 28 in a report. read more

Shell begins restart of Prelude FLNG after seven-month suspension

FEBRUARY 12, 2020

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Protests broke out in many parts of Canada over the past week, triggered by arrests of dozens of protesters on traditional indigenous land along a route for TC Energy Corp’s (TRP.TO) planned Coastal GasLink pipeline.

The demonstrations have disrupted freight and passenger rail and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday urged protesters to find a quick solution.

WHAT ARE THE PROTESTS ABOUT?

The flashpoint was police arrests that started last week in northern British Columbia of protesters who oppose the pipeline’s construction on traditional land of the Wet’suwet’en indigenous people. read more

The above extracts are from Trustpilot, Facebook Group: Shell Energy (formerly First Utility) – the worst customer service ever?? and First Utility Reviews

The Shell Energy gripe website is being launched in response to consumer horror stories involving debt collectors and bailiffs, with complaints posted online by outraged Shell Energy customers like the damning examples quoted in the above header.

By John Donovan

Shell and its shareholders will not welcome the news that I am launching another website later this month focussed on Shell. This time the target is Shell Energy, a global brand of rapidly growing importance and value to the parent company – Royal Dutch Shell Plc – in its quest to move away from an increasingly toxic fossil fuel-based business. Part of the gathering flight of ethical investors deserting Big Oil, in Shell’s case a transition into becoming a global energy and broadband company, instead of a dying oil giant. read more

• Author: Andrew Toh    Wanda Wang    Eric Yep
• Editor: Wendy Wells
• 25 March 2019

Shell has loaded the first condensate cargo from Australia’s Prelude FLNG project, the company said Monday.

“We can confirm that the first shipment of condensate has sailed from the Shell-operated Prelude FLNG facility. This is another step towards steady state operations,” a Shell spokesperson said in an emailed response.

The Shell-controlled Aframax tanker, Advantage Atom, departed from Prelude FLNG on March 20, S&P Global Platts vessel tracking software cFlow showed. read more

• Author: Andrew Toh    Wanda Wang
• Editor: Liz Thang
• CommodityOil

Singapore — Shell’s first condensate cargo from the Prelude FLNG project in Australia has been delayed further from its original February load date and possibly to March, due to production issues, trade sources said Friday.

Shell did not immediately respond to an email query seeking comment.

The first Prelude condensate cargo was originally scheduled to load over January 31-February 2, shipping reports showed at the start of January. Later reports subsequently showed this was delayed to February 12-14, and then to February 24-26. read more

Shell Australia has “well advanced” plans for a 120 MW utility scale PV array to supply its QGC onshore gas operations in northern Queensland. The announcement was made Shell Australia Chairman Zoe Yujnovich during a speech today, in which she pointed to an Australian “energy transition” in which “electrons will play a bigger role”.

The QGC operations sprawl across a landmass the size of Belgium and is Shell’s largest LNG project globally. Image: Shell

FEBRUARY 13, 2019 JONATHAN GIFFORD

Fossil fuel giant Shell’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations globally is set to be partly supplied by PV power. Shell Australia announced the move today, which will come in the form of a 120 MW solar farm to be developed on land that forms some of its QGC fracking operations in Queensland. The gas is liquefied, in an energy intensive process, at the 8.5 million tonne Curtis Island export facility near Gladstone – the company’s biggest LNG operation globally. read more

Offshore staff: 6 February 2019

PERTH, Australia – Shell Australia has contracted Wood and KBR to undertake integrated front-end engineering design (FEED) for the Crux gas project, 600 km (373 mi) north of Broome, offshore Western Australia.

The main facilities will comprise a remotely operated, not normally manned platform and a gas export pipeline.

Shell will use these as a source of backfill gas supply to the Prelude floating liquefied natural gas vessel, with the platform drying the gas and exporting gas/condensate to Prelude via a new 160-km (99-mi) multi-phase pipeline.

Wood and KBR’s engineering and project management teams in Perth will manage the program over 18 months, supported by Wood’s Kuala Lumpur division, providing integrated FEED for the topsides, jacket, export pipeline and subsea pipeline end manifold. read more

MELBOURNE, Feb. 5, 

Crux has long been considered a likely second phase to Shell’s $16.6-billion (Aus.) Prelude development that has recently been brought on stream via the world’s largest FLNG vessel permanently moored in the field.

Initially the hook-up was not envisioned for many years, as a back-fill when production of gas from Prelude began to decline late next decade. A development plan recently submitted to Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety & Management Authority (NOPSEMA), however, outlines the start of front-end engineering and design work for Crux later this year leading to a final investment decision in 2020. read more

Doha:  Shell Qatar Chairman and Managing Director Andrew Faulkner (pictured) said the Pearl Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) project is operating efficiently and achieving the business objectives for which it was founded.

Speaking to Qatar News Agency, Faulkner said Pearl GTL, which is the largest of its type and managed by Shell Qatar is benefiting the economic performance in the State of Qatar and is achieving strong financial returns that contribute to the sustainable development it seeks, and represents a serious opportunity for professional development as there are more than 300 Qataris occupying different positions. He added that the project also represents investment opportunities for many local companies through its operational and supply opportunities. read more

Jessica Jaganathan: December 26, 2018

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell said on Wednesday it has begun output at its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility in Australia, the world’s largest floating production structure and the last of a wave of eight LNG projects built in the country over the last decade.

Though the project started up later and cost more than originally estimated, it is expected to further cement Australia’s lead as the world’s biggest LNG exporter, after the country took the crown in November. read more

by Angela Macdonald-Smith: Feb 2 2018 at 12:03 PM: Updated Feb 2 2018 at 3:19 PM

Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden has declared that the energy giant’s confidence in the LNG market has been justified with no sign of the oversupply that others had warned of.

“The LNG glut is conspicuously absent isn’t it, much to the surprise of those that thought this was inevitable,” Mr van Beurden told reporters at Shell’s fourth-quarter results briefing in London. read more

Callum Turcan: Nov 15, 2017

Summary

• Royal Dutch Shell generates free cash flow in Q3.
• Outlook for Q4, even in light of impending capex increase, looks bright due to Brent rallying.
• Over $10 billion in net debt reduction since the end of Q3 2016.
• Overview of Q3 results and what to expect going forward.

Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) (NYSE:RDS.B) has come a long way since it bottomed out in early-2016. Its latest earnings report reinforced the notion that when Brent is trading in the $50s, Shell’s cash flow position becomes balanced. Cash flow neutrality is the key breakeven point for the industry in the current environment, as oil & gas giants need to show that they can cover capital expenditures and large dividends through organic means at realistic prices. Let’s check out how Royal Dutch Shell did in a low $50s Brent world, with an eye on organic cash inflows and outflows. read more

06 November 2017

The Shell Prelude Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) plant/ship of Royal Dutch Shell, which will be located in the Timor Sea off the North West coast of Australia, has been named as the FieldComm Group 2017 Plant of the Year.

This annual award is presented by FieldComm Group to recognise the people, companies and plant sites around the globe that are using the advanced capabilities of FOUNDATION FieldbusHART and WirelessHART technology in real-time applications for improved operations, maintenance, and asset productivity. This is the second award presented to a Shell facility, with the first being awarded in 2011 to Shell Scotford in Alberta, Canada.

At the peak of its recent commissioning efforts Prelude’s staff was performing more than 500 loop checks per week, and checking multiple streams of complex functions. The vessel’s utilities plant was also running 24/7, which made maintenance challenging. Thanks to using templates for its parameters, Prelude’s staff and contractors achieved total time-savings of 80% for device commissioning and loop checking across all devices using device templates; time savings for the valve positioner loop check procedure was more than 80% for the full loop test; tested all device types during the FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) in less than three days, compared to previous test using traditional methods, which took more than two days to test just three device types; and human error during FAT was quickly identified allowing for fast correction. read more

Australia’s $180 bln LNG megaproject boom enters final stretch

* Shell, Inpex race to tap gas in adjacent fields

* Ichthys LNG targets first output by March 2018

* Prelude FLNG seen starting between April and July

* Australia on course to 88 mln T/yr LNG export capacity

By Sonali Paul

MELBOURNE, Aug 14 (Reuters) – The last massive component of Australia’s $180 billion liquefied natural gas construction boom arrived on Monday, stepping up a race between Anglo-Dutch giant Shell and Japan’s Inpex to start chilling gas for export in 2018.

Company reputations are at stake, as well as first access to overlapping gas fields and Australia leapfrogging Qatar as the world’s largest exporter of LNG.

The Ichthys Venturer, a floating production, storage and offloading facility, travelled 5,600 km (3,500 miles) from a South Korean shipyard and will be moored 220 km off Western Australia to handle condensate from the Ichthys field. read more

“There will be fewer one-of-a-kind highly complex mega-projects and proportionately more simple to medium complex projects… This heralds a more ‘commoditised’ world for project delivery,” said the document, which was given to royaldutchshellplc.com, an independent website used by Shell staff, and seen by Reuters.

By Reuters: PUBLISHED: 09:26, 31 July 2017 

By Tom Bergin

LONDON, July 31 (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell Plc plans to cut more than 400 jobs in the Netherlands, mainly at its major projects and energy technology operations, as the oil giant shifts its business model in response to lower oil prices, according to an internal document seen by Reuters.

The world’s second-largest oil company by market capitalisation said in a statement responding to questions from Reuters that “approximately 400 (staff) are potentially at risk of redundancy during the last quarter of 2017/first half of 2018”. read more

Losses on Corrib near €2bn as Shell sells up

It had been beset by more than a decade of delays and rows with protesters before production began.

Gavin McLoughlin: July 13 2017 2:30 AM

The Corrib gas field has left Shell and its partners in the project with losses running to the best part of €2bn to date.

Shell announced yesterday it was exiting the project in a deal worth potentially as much as €1.08bn, selling its 45pc stake in the project to a Canadian pension fund, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB).

The deal – which is expected to complete next year – will see Shell take an impairment charge of around $350m (€307m) and write off $400m (€350m) in historical currency movements that have impacted on its valuation of the asset. read more

FLNG projects – mega tankers fitted with gas extraction and liquefaction facilities – allow producers to tap offshore gas wells and ship LNG without having to build costly pipelines to onshore plants. Owners can move the vessels to new fields when production at an old one ends, slashing asset end-of-life costs.

By Mark Tay: Reuters 6 March 2017

SINGAPORE: Once considered the future of gas production, floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) projects have been firmly relegated to the backburner as global gas producers seek cheaper ways to compete with a surge in U.S. shale supplies and slumping prices. read more

Extracts from a Reuters/Nasdaq article “Australia’s Ichthys LNG dealt blow as major contractor pulls plug”  dated 25 Jan 2017.

Australia’s$200 billion LNG production ramp-up is one of the biggest increases in supply the industry has ever seen, and it will lift Australia over Qatar as the world’s biggest exporter of the fuel.

Even so, most of Australia’s LNG projects currently under construction, including Chevron’s huge Gorgon facility and Royal Dutch Shell’s floating Prelude production vessel, are having trouble keeping within budget and sticking to schedules, and more delays are expected. read more

BRIDGET CARTER, GRETCHEN FRIEMANN:

• The Australian
• 12:00AM August 30, 2016

The one thing that the Woodside Petroleum-led Browse project has never had much of is unity among the project partners. But that may quietly be changing.

DataRoom understands that the various joint-venture partners in Browse are open to new development options for the project, and that the pipeline option floated by Woodside last week is increasingly being seen by all the partners as the most sensible plan as it stands today.

Woodside chief Peter Coleman told journalists on Friday that the option of connecting Browse to the big but ageing North West Shelf liquefied natural gas plant via a massive 1000km subsea pipeline was back on the table. read more

Jon Asmundsson: August 15, 2016

When the sun rose over the Caribbean Sea on July 25, the Maran Gas Apollonia was churning toward the new Panama Canal with a shipment of U.S. liquefied natural gas that it had loaded at Cheniere Energy’s Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana. Tugs guided the 90,434-ton tanker into the first of the Panama Canal’s new Agua Clara Locks. The gates closed, and water filled the first chamber. That night the vessel passed through Gatun Lake and the new Cocoli Locks and entered the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first LNG tanker to transit the expanded shipping lane that opened in June. Built in 2014, the Royal Dutch Shell-chartered tanker is about 13 meters (43 feet) wider than the largest ships the old locks could handle. The expansion opens the Panama Canal to about 90 percent of the world’s LNG fleet, up from less than 10 percent, allowing these football-field-size tankers to shave 11 days and one-third the cost of the typical round trip to Asia. In July the U.S. Department of Energy predicted 550 tankers could be crossing each year by 2021. — read more

by Angela Macdonald-Smith: July 29 2016

Royal Dutch Shell looks to be heading for an exit from Woodside Petroleum sooner rather than later, after reclassifying its remaining $3 billion stake in the Australian oil and gas producer as an “asset for sale”.

The move appears to be driven by technical reasons because of Shell’s reduced representation on Woodside’s board. But at the same time it may signal a firmer intention to dispose of the circa 13 per cent stake, which Shell has for some time declared as a non-strategic holding. read more

By Lynn Doan: June 10, 2016 – 10.52 PM BST

For months, banks including Citigroup Inc. have talked about a massive oversupply in the global market for liquefied natural gas. The head of natural gas at Royal Dutch Shell Plc, one of the world’s biggest producers of the fuel, would beg to differ.

“There isn’t really yet the kind of oversupply that people talk about,” Maarten Wetselaar, Shell’s integrated gas and new energies director, said on Friday in an interview in Palo Alto, California. For proof, he said, look at Europe, where natural gas demand gained last year and LNG imports from overseas were little changed. read more

Mr Henry said Prelude “remains on track to deliver some material cash flow in 2018,” signalling the venture still has some way until start-up.

Angela Macdonald-Smith: Energy Reporter:May 5, 2016

Royal Dutch Shell acknowledges the roll-out of its floating LNG technology will occur much more slowly than anticipated a few years ago, leaving its ground-breaking Prelude venture in WA as potentially its sole FLNG venture for several years.

Shell had targeted a conveyor belt of huge FLNG vessels running of the production line in South Korea, being deployed at remote gas fields worldwide, with several in waters around Asia.

But three projects that could have used five new FLNG vessels have been halted in their tracks, leaving the $US12 billion Prelude venture Shell’s only one for the forseeable future. FLNG ventures planned by other companies in Australia have also fallen foul to cost and price issues. read more

Written by Rita Brown – 11/04/2016 7:38 am

GE Oil & Gas today confirmed it had started production on four high pressure, high temperature dynamic flexible risers destined for Shell’s Prelude, the world’s largest offshore floating facility.

The firm is building them to survive a 1-in-10,000-year cyclonic event, according to the contract spec.

GE will complete the work at its facility in Newcastle, UK, where it has invested more than $21million to expand its production carousel capacity to accommodate the giant kit. They must also be able to withstand high pressures, high operating temperatures, the potential for cold shut-downs and rapid depressurisation. read more

Peter Klinger: November 11, 2015

Ann Pickard, once dubbed the “bravest woman in oil and gas” before she transformed Royal Dutch Shell’s century old presence in Australia, has quit the Anglo-Dutch giant.

However, the decision to retire from Shell will not spell the end of her exposure to oil and gas, and LNG in particular which she championed during her stint as the Anglo Dutch giant’s Australia country chair.

Ms Pickard is joining the board of oil and gas engineering contractor KBR as a non-executive director from next month. read more

Angela Macdonald-Smith: November 4, 2015

Royal Dutch Shell remains unequivocally bullish on prospects for liquefied natural gas despite the current market glut, pointing to several options for new supply projects after its planned $US70 billion ($97 billion) takeover of BG Group and plenty of new markets opening up around the world.

“The fundamentals of this market look as robust now as in the past to us,” chief financial officer Simon Henry told investors overnight Australian time, spelling out Shell’s expectation that global LNG demand will expand at 5 per cent a year to 2030, only modestly lower than the 8 per cent annual growth seen since 2000. read more

by  AOG Staff: Monday, 19 October 2015

SBM Offshore has been awarded the front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract for three large scale turret mooring systems associated with the proposed Browse floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) development in Australia.

The turrets are expected to be designed similar to and slightly larger in size than the Shell Prelude FLNG turret that SBM Offshore was awarded in 2011, and whose last module was recently successfully delivered from the construction yard in Dubai. Integration with the Prelude facility in Korea is currently ongoing. read more

Matt Chambers: Resources Reporter: Melbourne: 31 July 2015

Oil major Shell has laid down tougher hurdles for its Australian projects including Browse LNG off Western Australia and Arrow coal-seam gas in Queensland.

It has cut the oil price at which new projects need to go ahead and flagged a major LNG project ­pipeline overhaul if its planned $91 billion takeover of BG Group is successful.

Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said the company would require projects to be profitable near $US50 a barrel of oil, down from previous indications of ­between $US70 and $US90. read more

By a Regular Contributor

Hopefully, Shell will soon accept that in the US Arctic their position is now untenable…

If RDS wants to cut capex (and exposure), FLNG is a good place to start, as Simon Henry suggested yesterday. The Arctic should be next. 

The Arctic is rapidly acquiring a similar profile to the Brent Spar fiasco. The issue is not whether Greenpeace is right or wrong, it is whether Shell can win the hearts and minds of the public to support their efforts. So far, Shell’s own incompetence has been the most significant issue in eliminating any public support they once enjoyed. 

The destruction of drilling vessels and criminal convictions for polluting the environment and failing to keep the required records support the view that Shell do not know what they are doing. Neither Shell’s army of lawyers nor the judges on whom they rely have ever worked offshore and have no idea of what it entails. However, the first time that there is any illegal discharge into the sea or the air (and it will happen), or a fatality, injury or  well control incident, the lawyers who are supporting Shell’s current efforts will have nothing constructive to say.  read more

By Angela Macdonald-Smith: Jul 30 2015

Royal Dutch Shell has signalled that a final go-ahead next year for the Browse floating liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia is far from a certainty given the cost challenges of the venture in the depressed oil price environment.

Chief financial officer Simon Henry listed Browse among several large international projects that would be subject to “the dynamic nature of decision making as we take both the oil price environment but also the supply chain and the cost level into account.” read more

By Wendy Laursen 2015-07-05 

Drydocks World has marked a major milestone by completing the world’s largest turret mooring system.

At almost 100 meters high, weighing over 11,000 tons and with a diameter of 26 meters, the turret will ensure Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility can operate safely in the most extreme weather conditions. 

The FLNG will be stationed in the Prelude gas field off the northwest coast of Australia. It will be Shell’s first FLNG deployment. The technology allows for the production, liquefaction, storage and transfer of LNG at sea, as well as the ability to process and export liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and condensate. read more

Written by Rita Brown – 03/07/2015

Shell has awarded the Technip Samsung Consortium two contracts for its $40billion natural gas project in Australia.

Shell’s Browse project covers the installation of three FLNG units to develop the Brecknock, Calliance and Torosa fields in the Browse Basin.

Shell, which has a 27% interest in the scheme, will use its floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) technology to leveraging the site’s 15.4 trillion-cubic-feet of gas.

The Technip Samsung Consortium will manage the front-end engineering design (FEED) elements of the Browse FLNG project, taking into account the composition of the gas, local weather conditions and factors specific to each of the three fields. read more

Shell-led Canadian LNG deal gets environmental approvals

Thursday Jun 18, 2015

By Julie Gordon

(Reuters) – Canada’s environment ministry said on Wednesday it approved a Royal Dutch Shell Plc-led liquefied natural gas export terminal on British Columbia’s coast, contingent on the project meeting 50 environmental, social and operational conditions.

In her decision, federal Environment Minister Leona Aglukkaq concluded that the effects of the proposed LNG Canada project “are justified in the circumstances.”

She said the project would create thousands of jobs and contribute billions of dollars to the economy. read more

Article by Carl Surran published 25March 2015 by SeekingAlpha.com

Shell sees only 15%-20% of Canada LNG projects advancing

A top executive at Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, RDS.B) says he expects only 15%-20% of liquefied natural gas export projects already approved by the Canadian government to go ahead in the next decade.

Markus Hector, Shell’s general manager of global LNG, says the low forecast success rate is partly due to the scale of the infrastructure projects and the competition for people with the skills to build them.

Shell itself is the lead partner in a consortium planning the LNG Canada facility on British Columbia’s northern coast and is not expected to make a final investment decision until at least 2016. read more

By John Donovan

PRELUDE DESIGNED BY SHELL LAWYERS? MORE IMPORTANT ROLE THAN ENGINEERS? 

What will Bill Campbell make of the boasts from Shell’s chief lawyer Donny Ching, about the pivotal role of Shell in-house lawyers in the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, Prelude FLNG?

Extracts from an article about Donny Ching published by The Law Society Gazette on 5 December 2014:

Ching also believes that external law firms would have been no substitute for in-house lawyers in the work they did to build the world’s first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, Prelude FLNG. read more