Workers are reportedly being evacuated from Shell's Prelude floating LNG facility off north-west Australia following a fire on 2 December, according to local media reports.
Shell is evacuating crew from the giant vessel due to power failures linked to last Thursday's fire, reported Perth-based media group WAtoday.
The Australian energy analyst and commentator EnergyQuest said Shell has suspended production following a small fire on 2 December.
A spokesperson for Shell confirmed that on 2 December 2021 at about 11pm Western Australian time smoke was detected in an electrical utility area which triggered the automatic fire detection and management systems on board the Prelude FLNG facility.
"The area was made safe by the systems in place and it did not spread further. All workers on the facility are safe and accounted for. While work is underway to restore main power, production on Prelude has been suspended temporarily," the spokesperson said.
Perth-based sources said only a skeleton crew is required on board the facility in the event of a production suspension.
Once the main power has been restored on the FLNG vessel, Shell will be able to work through the next stages of reintroducing hydrocarbons.
EnergyQuest said the quarter ending 30 September 2021 was Prelude’s best-ever quarter since start-up, shipping 827,000 tonnes of LNG (11 cargoes) in the quarter, representing 91% of nameplate capacity of 3.6 millon tpa.
The latest quarterly result was not far behind production for the entire year to June 2020 of 1 million tonnes.
Five of the third-quarter cargoes were delivered to Korea, Japan received four and Singapore and Taiwan each took one.
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