Posts under ‘boilingpoint.com.au’

Expert comments relating to the Peter Milne article for WAtoday:

Shell ordered to shut down Prelude floating LNG until it is safe: 24 December 2021

Comment by Bill Campbell the retired HSE Group Auditor at Shell EP International

Actions by the Regulator should be welcomed.

Not surprisingly, it’s obvious and should be obvious to the keenest shellites that Prelude has serious design and operational problems raising workforce risk levels to unacceptable levels. You simply cannot continue to operate if you are unable to demonstrate through weekly testing that safety-critical equipment, fire pumps and emergency generators et al are available automatically and immediately when called on. This is a legal requirement and a commitment given by Shell in the installations Safety Case. read more

WAtoday

How Shell lost control of its $24B Prelude floating gas factory

By Peter Milne: December 21, 2021 — 9.01pm

In early December a small fire on Shell’s 488-m Prelude gas facility off WA’s coast kicked off a cascade of failures that left about 250 workers, 475 km from Broome, without communications, lights, running water or access to helicopters.

With almost every system on Australia’s most complex offshore facility out of action workers scrambled to restart power that everything depended on, with at least two stretchered to the Prelude’s hospital with heat exhaustion. read more

Western Australia Today

Shell’s giant $24b Prelude LNG ship shut down after fire

By Peter Milne: December 3, 2021 — 1.14pm

A fire late Thursday night on Shell’s Prelude floating LNG vessel off the Kimberley coast caused production at the $24 billion giant to be shut down and left the crew using backup power.

A small fire was detected at about 11pm in an electrical equipment area on the world’s largest vessel that can accommodate more than 200 crew.

A Shell spokesman said the fire triggered automatic fire systems and was extinguished before it spread further and all workers were safe and accounted for. read more

Fossil fuel multinational Shell does not believe it will ever pay the Australian government a cent in resource taxes for the gas it draws from the country’s biggest gas project, Gorgon.

The projection about taxes on the gas, which is likely to be sold for billions of dollars a year, is contained in the company’s latest annual report, released last month, and was first reported by energy news website Boilingcold.

It covers both Gorgon – a project off the West Australian coast that when fully operational is expected to provide 15.6m tonnes of gas a year – and Shell’s smaller Prelude project, a floating gas facility that also sits off WA. read more

Shell predicts free gas forever from Gorgon and Prelude LNG projects

by Peter Milne | Mar 31, 2021 | Energy & Environment

Shell’s accountants predict the Dutch giant will never pay Australia for gas extracted at the Gorgon and Prelude LNG projects that it can sell for up to about $4 billion a year. Peter Milne from independent energy and climate news site Boiling Cold has the story.

Dutch giant Shell forecasts it will never pay Australia for oil and gas extracted for the Gorgon and Prelude LNG projects that it can sell for up to almost $4 billion a year. read more

Shell’s Prelude FLNG project exec, Rob Jager, to depart

The Shell executive tasked with delivering its $US12bn ($17.5bn)-plus Prelude floating LNG project is set to quit the energy giant.

Jager did not last long…

It was only in December 2018 that his arrival was announced

“Shell Australia, a unit of the Hague-based LNG giant Shell, recently welcomed Rob Jager to Perth as the new vice president for the massive Prelude FLNG project.”

Jager moved to Perth from New Zealand, where he was the Country Chair & VP for Shell New Zealand / Shell Taranaki for more than 13 years. read more

Expert comments received in response to the BoilingCold article by Peter Milne “No winners from Shell’s $US17B Prelude floating LNG”

Comment from retired Shell International Global Safety Consultant, Bill Campbell:

It’s all rather depressing, most worrying aspect as implied in the article is the potential gas supply, or lack of it, from the homogeneous and shared reservoir with another operator bleeding off volumes.

The boilingcold.com.au journalist Peter Milne has given the most detailed analysis yet of the Prelude story, elements of both tragedy and farce.

COMMENT FROM “AN OLD SHELL E&P ENGINEERING SEA DOG”

As before I feel very sorry for the Aussies who are under extreme pressure to get this unit up and running.  I do not quite understand the journalist comment of “gas is running out”.  It is a shared reservoir therefore there will be an agreement for the total volumes in place and a regular review taking place to determine the remaining producible volumes and the agreed volume share for each operator.

The links below are to a series of articles, many triggered by a well-placed whistleblower directly involved in the pioneering Royal Dutch Shell Prelude project. Includes articles by Mr Bill Campbell above, the retired distinguished HSE Group Auditor of Shell International and another retired Shell guru with a track record of spotting potential pitfalls in major Shell projects.

The fears voiced by Bill Campbell about a loss of containment (see article link 3) have proven well-founded.

Ask the Australian National Offshore Petroleum and Environmental Management Authority.

ARTICLE: Voser wisely abandons an unstable ship: 28 December 2013

ARTICLE: Royal Dutch Shell Prelude to disaster?: 10 Jan 2014

ARTICLE: Shell Prelude FLNG: loss of containment of hydrocarbons almost inevitable: 21 Feb 2014

ARTICLE: What should frighten stiff Royal Dutch Shell shareholders: 15 March 2014

ARTICLE: Tales of the Unexpected and Royal Dutch Shell Prelude FLNG: 28 March 2014

ARTICLE: Prelude FLNG: A case of all your eggs in the one basket: 10 July 2014

ARTICLE: Prelude FLNG risks are on par with modern offshore oil and gas facilities say Shell – but are they?: 23 Sept 2014 read more

  Peter Milne: 15 May 2020 • 10 min read

ANALYSIS

Shell’s Prelude floating LNG facility off the WA coast was to be the first of many that would open up stranded gas reserves around the world thanks to the technical and project management prowess of Anglo-Dutch oil and gas giant Shell.It has not turned out that way.When the 488m-long giant arrived in Australia almost three years ago, Shell expected to receive cashflow from the Prelude in 2018.

While the Prelude did export LNG at about half its capacity for the second half of 2019, it is now idle.

Moored far off the Kimberley coast it is plagued with technical problems, dwindling gas reserves and safety processes condemned by the regulator despite Shell and its partners spending about $US19.3 billion ($A30.0 billion) to the end of 2019.

Neither Shell and its partners nor Australia have gained anything near what they expected from the giant experiment. read more

The Prelude first received gas from its subsea wells in December 2018 and by the end of June 2019 had produced 2.32 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, according to emissions data released by the Clean Energy Regulator today.

Conservation Council of WA director Piers Verstegen said the emissions data was absolutely shocking and suggested that Shell was making no effort to reduce Prelude’s emissions. read more