Search

Abstract Underneath the ground, the world still left a quarter of its natural gas resources (approximately 2 billion TCF) undeveloped or "Stranded" in offshore. Many gas fields were discovered in many decades ago, but the resources of those fields could not commercially be justified for the development so they were classified as marginal fields. One of the most promising solutions known as "Floating Liquefied Natural Gas or FLNG" is lately growing and foreseen as potential technical to monetize these marginal gas fields offshore and near-shore. We are well aware of the potential in FLNG technology and consider it as the one of the most important initiatives to lead our organization to achieve target growth. Many challenges in developing FLNG, however, have been found from major players in the past decade. Although land-based LNG and offshore FPSOs are each successfully proven in operations, combining the two technologies into FLNG is complicated and face various technical challenges e.g. safety, ship motion, topside processing, hull & containment, offloading, integration, and operation. The critical aspect of FLNG is space constraint, which requires fully attention in order to deliver inherently safe and fit-for-purpose installation. Altogether, FLNG concept shall fulfill a good balance between efficiency and simplicity to safeguard the reliability of the facility. Moreover, commercial aspect of FLNG is also highly challenging. With costly investment, FLNG project shall be carefully ensured if it is economic viable in every step of the project. The sensitivity of market, LNG price, and demand & supply shall be reviewed and taken into consideration prior to making the Final Investment Decision (FID). Certainly, FLNG initiative still has a lot of queries. However, after years of study and development in all aspects of floating liquefaction, it finally leads to the key conclusion that today there is no technical issue as "show stopper" for FLNG; whereas economic is also promisingly attractive. We believe that we have started on the right track and in the right sequence as well as adopting a risk management in selecting the right size and the right technology for FLNG.