AsianOil: Prelude FLNG shutdown extended by regulator’s order

Australia’s National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) has ordered Royal Dutch Shell not to return its Prelude floating LNG (FLNG) facility to service until the company can prove that it can keep the vessel properly powered and that safety systems are operational.
The order comes in response to Shell’s move to take Prelude offline earlier in December after the facility, located offshore Western Australia, lost power following a fire. Several attempts to restore power aboard Prelude failed, leading NOPSEMA to send inspectors to the facility days after the outage amid growing concerns over safety. The inspectors found that Shell “did not have sufficient understanding of the risks of the power systems on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies and recovery”.
Shell has launched an investigation into the cause of the power failure at Prelude, but NOPSEMA has said this does not go far enough. Consequently, the regulator has directed Shell to broaden the scope of its investigation to address the gaps it has identified. It also wants the super-major to develop a detailed plan to implement necessary corrective actions, which is to be presented to NOPSEMA.
Under the NOPSEMA order, Shell will need to demonstrate that Prelude can safely recover essential power and associated services following a loss of power and that safety and essential support systems are operational. There is speculation that the order could keep Prelude offline until at least March, if not longer. This comes as a further blow to the FLNG project, which was offline for most of 2020 owing to a separate set of electrical problems.