While today's volatile business environment - including the global financial crisis; technological advancements, maturing 'easy gas' developments, heightened environmental scrutiny and an overheated construction market may have delayed FIDs for LNG projects, this same combination of forces and trends have led to the energy industry's renewed interest in Floating LNG (FLNG) and a growing belief that its time may have finally come, at least for a few of the interested parties and as evidenced by Shell taking FID on the Prelude FLNG Project in Australia. Floating liquefaction of natural gas or FLNG has captured the imagination of engineers and LNG business developers ever since it was first considered. The concept is simple, but attractive: "Let's put the LNG facilities directly over the offshore gas resource rather than processing and piping the gas long distances to onshore liquefaction facilities". FLNG has huge potential to extend the portfolio of traditional LNG concepts necessary to meet the energy challenge of the 21st century. Technological and commercial challenges may have prevented FLNG succeeding for a long time, as evidenced by the fact that there are no FLNG facilities currently in operation, but the world's first FID has been taken in May this year and the Prelude FLNG Project will move ahead through detailed design and construction over the next few years. The market circumstances, the environmental circumstances, and the technical maturity lead us to believe that Shell FLNG has now grown up to become a very serious gas monetisation option and that this first FID will not be the last. The technical concept of Shell FLNG with some of its key technical challenges, and the inherent safety approach applied throughout the design is described in this paper. The main focus is on some of the key technical challenges and choices made in the design.

The rapid market growth in LNG and the development of large gas reserves such as the North Field of Qatar demand another step-change in the capacity of LNG trains, as lowest unit cost continues to be a key value driver. With the standard Propane Mixed Refrigerant (C3/MR) technology, capacities up to 5 Mtpa can be achieved with two GE Frame 7 gas turbines as drivers. For higher LNG capacities new configurations are required. Shell has developed designs for both mechanically driven and electrically driven large LNG trains, featuring low cost and low emissions. The choice is determined by project specific considerations. The Shell Parallel Mixed Refrigerant process consists of a single pre-cool cycle followed by two parallel liquefaction cycles. For pre-cooling either propane or a mixed refrigerant, like in Shell's Double Mixed Refrigerant Process (DMR), is used. With three well proven GE Frame 7 gas turbines, 8 Mtpa of LNG production is achieved. With GE Frame 9 or Siemens V84.2 gas turbines, the LNG capacity increases to 10 Mtpa; these gas turbines are still novel drivers for the LNG industry but are already used as mechanical drivers in other processes. The Shell Parallel Mixed Refrigerant Process for large LNG trains has a number of appealing advantages:Robustness through the application of well-proven equipment without scale-up of equipment.High reliability and availability by parallel line-up of the liquefaction cycle. For example, if one of the liquefaction cycles trips, LNG production is designed to continue at 60% of train capacity.The optimal power balance between the two liquefaction cycles (1:2) results in a high efficiency. The application of Shell's electrically driven DMR process is also very attractive. This concept is based on a parallel line-up of the refrigerant compressors around a common set of cryogenic spoolwound exchangers. Electric motors of 65 MW have already been constructed for LNG service. In combination with Shell's DMR technology an LNG production capacity of 8 Mtpa can be achieved. The power station is driven by gas turbines.

Introduction This paper addresses the economical and technical justification for the rejuvenation of the existing, 33 years old, Brunei LNG plant to extend its lifetime with a third 20-year contract period to 2033. After an introduction into the history of the development of the Brunei LNG plant, and its growth aspirations for the 21st century, the paper will further focus on the current Asset Reference Plan (ARP) and in particular the technical challenges of the replacement of the Main Cryogenic heat exchangers in four out of the five Brunei LNG production trains. Brunei LNG History The construction of Brunei LNG started in 1968, and first LNG was exported to Japan in 1972. The shareholders of the BLNG plant are the Brunei Government (50%), Mitsubishi Corporation (25%) and Shell (25%). Shell Global Solutions, has also been the technical advisor of the Brunei LNG plant since the initial phases of the project. The BLNG project was the first to use the Propane Mixed refrigerant (C3/MR) process, with spool wound main cryogenic heat exchangers. In the original plant, eleven boilers generated the steam for the turbine driven refrigerant compressors. Treated river water is used as cooling medium in an open cooling cycle. Each liquefaction train has a separate gas treating section that consists of an acid gas removal unit, dehydration unit and mercury removal unit. Originally, the BLNG project included four trains with a design capacity of 1.05 MTPA. During construction, the scope was increased with a fifth train of the same capacity. This fifth train started production in 1974. As the main cryogenic heat exchanger of the fifth train was produced later than the original four, an updated design was installed in train 5. First Rejuvenation Between 1992 and 1994, the first rejuvenation and debottlenecking project was carried out at BLNG. In subsequent years plant debottlenecking projects have been implemented and the production capacity reached a maximum of 7.3 MTPA or almost 140% of initial design capacity by 2003 (Fig. 1).

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Floating LNG (FLNG) has captured the imagination of engineers and LNG business developers ever since it was first considered over a decade ago. The concept is simple, but attractive: "Let's put the LNG facilities directly over the offshore gas resource rather than processing and piping the gas long distances to shore". FLNG has huge potential to extend the portfolio of traditional LNG schemes necessary to meet the energy challenge of the 21st Century. Whilst technological and commercial challenges may have prevented FLNG succeeding to date, as evidenced by the fact that there are no FLNG facilities currently in operation; and whilst today's dynamic business environment, technological advancements, maturing 'easy gas' developments, heightened environmental scrutiny and overheated construction market have delayed FIDs for LNG projects, this same combination of forces and trends have led to the energy industry's renewed interest in FLNG.Shell will share its perspectives on FLNG -reflecting on the learnings of past studies as well as looking forward to its plans over the next decade, including the expectation that one or more of its FLNG solutions will be in operation globally. The current technical concept with some of its key technical challenges, and the inherent safety approach applied throughout the design will be described. The process configuration of the topsides, the design of the substructure, the environmental characteristics, and the mooring system will also be covered.