PACC, Ezion to facilitate delivery of largest offshore facility ever made

Shell’s Prelude FLNG will leave on a two-month trip to Australia in June.

According to a report by OCBC, Shell’s Prelude FLNG, the world’s largest offshore facility ever constructed, is set to launch from Singapore in late June thanks to contributions by PACC Offshore Services Holdings, Ezion Holdings, and Samsung Heavy Industries. The facility is projected to arrive at its destination in Australia after a two-month journey.

This revolutionary vessel – bigger than the combined size of four football fields and six times the weight of the world’s largest aircraft carrier – compresses the sprawling mass of a traditional land-based LNG plant into a large custom-built barge as was the aim of Shell’s floating natural gas project. Petronas has already deployed the world’s first LNG facility in Malaysia, but Prelude will be far and away the largest.

Two local Singapore companies, PACC Offshore Services Holdings (POSH) and Ezion Holdings, will play a part in supporting this significant project. POSH Terasea, a 50-50 joint venture between POSH and Terasea Pte Ltd (in turn a venture between Ezion and Seabridge Marine Services) will be responsible for the 4800km tow from Samsung, and the positioning of the vessel at the Prelude field in Australia. POSH will also be providing its semi-submersible accommodation vessel POSH Arcadia to house up to 750 workers during the hook-up and commissioning phase, a huge undertaking that could take up to four months, according to Upstream’s sources. For the towing work, five vessels will be deployed – the AHT vessels Terasea Osprey, Terasea Falcon, Terasea Hawk and Terasea Eagle, plus the 16,000 BHP AHTS vessel POSH Champion.

Here’s more from OCBC:

Besides this, POSH Terasea is also scheduled for work for the INPEX Ichthys CPF and FPSO, as well as Egina FPSO unit. Hence after a relatively quiet 1Q17, POSH Terasea is expected to ramp up and remain busy for the rest of the year. This compares to net loss of USD7.8m ($10.8m) in 2016 and net profit of USD15.7m ($21.7m) in 2015. Meanwhile, the overall operating environment for the broader sector remains challenging, especially for the OSV segment and some parts of the offshore accommodation segment. We tweak our USD/SGD assumptions and our FV eases slightly from $0.335 to $0.325.