SHELL’S GIANT FLOATING LNG FACILITY PRELUDE SHIPS FIRST LNG CARGO

SHELL shipped out its first cargo of Liquefied Natural Gas from the worlds’ biggest floating facility PRELUDE FLNG placed in Australian waters, where more than 2000 highly engineered AMPO POYAM valves are currently installed.

The LNG was loaded on Valencia Knutsen LNG tanker, which headed for Asia.

AMPO POYAM VALVES supplied more than 2,000 highly engineered valves for this innovative floating facility; diverse cryogenic ball valves, metal to metal ball valves, pressure seal gate valves as well as check valves. The valves’ sizes range up to 24” and met very demanding requirements in terms of materials and design. Design temperatures from -196º C up to 300ºC were moreover inquired by Shell for the same valves. Consequently, TAT tests were performed successfully to ensure that valves met all its design specifications and to ensure total reliability of the products.

This facility was constructed by the Technip Samsung Consortium at the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) shipyard in Geoje, South Korea. From the beginning of its construction phase until the commissioning stage AMPO POYAM VALVES served to this complex facility by means of AMPO SERVICE experts.

PRELUDE FLNG facility is an offshore development that lies nearly 475 km off Western Australia, stretching out the lenght of four football fields end to end and it will produce 3.6 million tonnes of LNG, 1.3 million tonnes of condensate and around 400,000 liquefied petroleum gas per year, with capacity to hold the same amount of liquid as 175 olympic-sized swimming pools.

This FLNG is currently operated by Shell in joint Venture with INPEX, KOGAS and OPIC.

Congratulations to SHELL, Technip Samsung Consortium, SHI, INPEX, KOGAS and OPIC and to all the teams involved in this project, which is a very important milestone. We wish a successful start-up of Prelude FLNG.