Regulators Order Shell's Prelude LNG to Shut Down for Safety Review
After a Australia's National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) has ordered Shell to keep its massive Prelude LNG offshore gas facility shut down until it can prove that it has made safety improvements.
Earlier this month, a small fire in an electrical compartment knocked Prelude's power supply offline, forcing a shutdown and a rush to get generators back up and running. According to NOPSEMA, that restart effort failed repeatedly, and Prelude's power kept shutting down for three days. With HVAC offline, heat exhaustion from rising temperatures inside the vessel put two workers in Prelude's hospital bay.
According to WA Today, Prelude's automatic safety systems shut down all production systems and began flaring gas when the fire was detected. This took out the gas supply for the facility's steam-fed turbine generators. An emergency diesel generator failed to start, and two backup diesel generators kept tripping and failing as well.
The power failure briefly took down all comms on the platform, and the crew reportedly had resort to calling a nearby support vessel over VHF to get messages out. The support vessel served as a relay station, using a satellite phone to send text messages back to management on shore.
“What happened on the Prelude under Shell’s watch earlier this month is unforgivable,” said Brad Gandy, spokesman for the labor group Offshore Alliance and local secretary for the Australian Workers Union. "This is not the first time similar failures have occurred on the Prelude and clearly Shell has not learned from its past mistakes.”
NOPSEMA's inspectors boarded Prelude on December 9-10, and their report was not favorable. "The Inspectors concluded that the operator did not have a sufficient understanding of the risks of the power system on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies and recovery," NOPSEMA said.
The inspectors found that the loss of power knocked out comms, access to the ship's safety documentation, evacuation systems for helicopter or boat transfer, lighting, potable water, safety systems, HVAC, sewage treatment and some of its core process equipment.
Crewmembers told WA Today that they were managing human waste manually because the sewage system was shut down, and without power for transfer pumps, they had to shuttle cans of diesel around by hand to keep a backup generator running.
The problems aboard Prelude could not have affected a more sophisticated ship. Along with the $13 billion aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford, Prelude is a top condender for the title of the most complex and expensive vessel ever built: though its final cost has not been disclosed, it is estimated at between $12-17 billion. After the heavy-lift ship Pioneering Spirit, Prelude is the world's second-largest vessel by displacement.
Concluding that Shell has not shown an ability to manage such a complex asset, NOPSEMA ordered that Prelude must be shut down until the operator can convince regulators "that the facility can safely recover essential power and associated essential services following a loss of power, and that the safety systems and essential support systems operate to maintain safety of personnel."
Regulator Orders Shell to Keep Prelude FLNG Output Shut Until it Can Prove It Is Safe
OE Staff December 24, 2021
Australian oil and gas industry safety regulator NOPSEMA has ordered Shell to keep the giant Prelude FLNG facility off W. Australia shut until it can convince the regulator that it can keep the facility properly powered and that the safety systems are operational.
The order comes after production from the floating facility was shut earlier this month after a sudden loss of power, and subsequent failed attempts to re-establish reliable power aboard.
In its report on Thursday, NOPSEMA said: "At around 22:40 on 2 December 2021, the Shell Australia Pty Ltd owned and operated Prelude FLNG facility experienced an unplanned event that resulted in a complete loss of power at the facility, which subsequently led to unreliable and intermittent power availability over 3 days. Multiple attempts during this period were made to re-establish reliable power."
NOPSEMA said that the loss of power had impacted the habitation and working conditions of the personnel on the facility, and that by December 6, 2021, the failure to restore reliable power was seen to represent an ongoing impact and risk to the health and safety of the person on the facility and NOPSEMA arranged to visit the facility.
"The Inspectors were mobilized at the first available opportunity on 8 December 2021, returning on 10 December. The Inspectors concluded that the operator did not have a sufficient understanding of the risks of the power system on the facility, including failure mechanisms, interdependencies and recovery," NOPSEMA said.
Lightning, Comms, Safety Systems all affected
According to NOPSEMA, the power failures directly impacted emergency response capability, operation of safety-critical equipment (e.g., communications, access to safety-critical documentation and information, Permit to Work System), and evacuation of personnel by helicopter or boat.
Essential services such as lighting, safety systems, communication systems, potable water systems, sewage treatment and HVAC were affected, too, with seven people treated for heat-related conditions).
The functionality of process equipment required to effectively manage the LNG inventory was also affected.
NOPSEMA thus ordered Shell to keep the LNG production from the Prelude FLNG unit shut, until it can "demonstrate to NOPSEMA’s satisfaction that the facility can safely recover essential power and associated essential services following a loss of power, and that the safety systems and essential support systems operate to maintain safety of personnel."
NOPSEMA also ordered Shell to develop a detailed plan, schedule, and commitment to timely implementation of all necessary corrective actions, and present the plan to NOPSEMA once complete.
Under the orders by NOPSEMA, Shell is expected, on the first business day of each month starting March 2022, to provide an update to NOPSEMA detailing progress under the orders made by the regulator.
The 488 meters long, Shell-operated Prelude FLNG unit forms part of an offshore development that produces natural gas from the remote namesake field approximately 475km north-northeast of Broome in Western Australia.
The first LNG shipment from the project - originally sanctioned in 2011 - was shipped back in June 2019, via the Valencia Knutsen LNG tanker to customers in Asia. Shell is the operator of the project, with other partners being INPEX, CPC, and KOGAS.
The world's largest FLNG facility had in January this year resumed LNG cargo shipments, almost one year after a shutdown caused by an electrical trip.
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