Publications

Floating LNG has been studied from almost 20 years. Since the first scratches till today a lot of things have changed and it seems the industry is on the verge of starting up its first Floating LNG units. This is also evident by the increased number of paper published during the last two years. However, the majority of the papers produced to date address technical issues exclusively from the engineering contractor’s point of view. This paper intends to provide an alternative approach and offers insights and considerations from the producer’s point of view. The FLNG process scheme selection will be tackled but from the more neutral position of an operator and mainly considering its impact beyond the usual efficiency arguments. An integrated approach should involve also reservoir considerations associated with the particular field selected, since for instance the gas composition can determine the LPG production, impacting as well the project logistics or storage requirements. The whole gas chain outlook will then allow drawing conclusions on the global field architecture. This kind of approach will permit as well to go into technical details such as process control architecture issues and offloading system selection. A risk analysis will enable further considerations around the design philosophy. A study case will be provided in order to illustrate the profile of a potential asset applying the above features.