(142c) Challenges and New Technologies for World Largest FLNG Facility

Growing rate of worldwide LNG demand is expected to be higher than that of the gas production, and such a higher demand has been driving forces for most of major oil companies to invest their resources in the offshore gas development. Especially FLNG concept will put vitality into approximately 2,400 marginal gas fields around the world, which were delayed because of excessive investment cost.

FLNG facility can provide attractive benefits by developing gas at the location of offshore gas field since it does not require conventional subsea pipeline to shore and additional upstream facilities. Based on the accumulated expertise in shipbuilding and offshore platform, it is possible to move LNG production facilities from onshore to offshore gas field.

As a world largest offshore LNG plant under construction, general overview of Prelude FLNG project will be presented. Although the state-of-the-art technologies applied for FLNG design have been obtained through past LNG-FSRU and oil FPSO projects, several technical challenges encountered during development and initial design stage of large scale FLNG concept will be introduced together with the implemented solutions.

Continuous efforts to improve the LNG related technologies by each party including oil & gas suppliers and shipbuilders will be the stepping stone to overcome any unrevealed challenge for the FLNG development. Some of latest design innovation devised for LNG containment system will be introduced.