Photos: DSME Completes World's First Floating LNG Facility PFLNG SATU

PFLNG Satu. Photo credit: Petronas

Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co has completed construction of the world’s first floating liquified natural gas facility at the DSME shipyard in Okpo, South Korea. The facility is being built for the Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas.

Final construction was marked on March 4th following a naming ceremony held by Petronas together with partners in the project DSME and Technip. During the ceremony the vessel’s name was revealed as PFLNG “SATU”.

Floating liquified natural gas facilities have been described as a game-changing technology in natural gas production, providing the ability to produce, liquefy, store and transfer LNG to shipped directly to global markets from often remote at-sea gas fields where it would otherwise be uneconomical to develop.

The Satu will be moored at Malaysia’s Kanowit gas field located in the South China Sea about 112 miles offshore Sarawak, Malaysia. The facility has the capacity to produce 1.2 million tonnes of LNG per year, and is expected to play a significant role in Petronas’ efforts to unlock the gas reserves in Malaysia’s remote oil fields.

Although the Satu can claim the title of the first FLNG facility ever completed, it is not the first one developed and is certainly not the largest. The technology was actually pioneered by Shell began developing Prelude FLNG back in 2011. The Prelude will be the biggest floating structure in world with a capacity to produce 3.6 million tonnes of LNG, 5.3 million tonnes of liquids, 1.3 million tonnes of condensate and 0.4 million of liquefied petroleum gas per year.

The Satu is expected to depart the shipyard in the second quarter of 2016.