Petronas Floating LNG Facility

Oil Oil and Energy 








Floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) refers to water-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) operations employing technologies designed to enable the development of offshore natural gas resources. Floating above an offshore natural gas field, the FLNG facility produces, liquefies, stores and transfers LNG (and potentially LPG and condensate) at sea before carriers ship it directly to markets. The world's first completed FLNG production facility is the PFLNG Satu located in Kanowit gas field off the shore of Sarawak in Malaysia.

Petronas Floating LNG FacilityPetronas is the owner of the platform and first cargo was loaded onto the 150,200-cbm Seri Camellia LNG carrier on 03 April 2017. Multiple other FLNG facilities are in development. Another FLNG facility, developed by Exmar NV using Black & Veatch PRICO(R) technology, passed performance test in October 2016 in Nantong, China. Fortuna FLNG, to be commissioned in 2020, owned by a joint-venture between Ophir Energy and Golar LNG is still under development in Equatorial Guinea, the US$2 billion vessel would be the first to produce its gas in Africa. The agreement between Equatorial Guinea and state-owned GEPetrol, Ophir and OneLNG reconfirms GEPetrol’s participation rights as partners in 20 per cent of the FLNG project.

The FLNG facility will be moored directly above the natural gas field. It will route gas from the field to the facility via risers. When the gas reaches the facility, it will be processed to produce natural gas, LPG, and natural gas condensate. The processed feed gas will be treated to remove impurities, and liquefied through freezing, before being stored in the hull. Ocean-going carriers will offload the LNG, as well as the other liquid by-products, for delivery to markets worldwide. The conventional alternative to this would be to pump gas through pipelines to a shore-based facility for liquefaction, before transferring the gas for delivery.

PFLNG 1 started production from the Kanowit gas field in December 2016 and loaded its first cargo in April 2017. The FLNG facility was relocated to Kebabangan field, offshore Sabah, Malaysia in March 2019. Kebabangan field is operated by Kebabangan Petroleum Operating Company. More details