GLNG: Prelude FLNG operations suspended following fire

Royal Dutch Shell suspended operations at its Prelude floating LNG (FLNG) facility offshore Western Australia after a fire broke out on the vessel last week.
Media cited company spokespersons as saying that smoke in an electrical utility area had triggered the automatic fire detection and management system at the facility on December 2, allowing the fire to be contained. However, the incident resulted in the loss of main power, forcing Prelude’s operations to be suspended.
Staff were evacuated from the vessel, which has been running on backup power from December 3, with only a skeleton crew left on board. As of December 7, Prelude’s main power supply and operations had yet to be restored, and no estimate has been provided for the length of the outage.
Argus Media cited market participants as saying one cargo could be cancelled and another delayed as a result of the shutdown, but for now the impact remains unknown.
The 3.6mn tonne per year (tpy) Prelude is the world’s largest FLNG project, and its complexity has contributed to a string of operational issues since it entered service in 2019. The facility was offline from February 2020 to January 2021 owing to technical issues.
The outage comes after another project in Western Australia, the Chevron-led Gorgon, saw its third train go offline for repairs after its first train had been returned to service following a brief outage. Around 2-3 cargoes from Gorgon could be lost as a result of the issues that project has been trying to address.