Wood and KBR inked a multimillion-dollar contract to deliver integrated front-end engineering design (FEED) for Shell Australia's Crux project to build a not-normally-manned (NNM) platform and gas export pipeline located approximately 600 km north of Broome, offshore Western Australia (WA). The Crux field water depth is 110 to 170 m.
The Crux facilities will be an important source of backfill gas supply to the Shell-operated Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility. The minimum facilities NNM platform for Crux will dry the gas and export the gas/condensate to Prelude via a new 160-km multiphase gas pipeline. The platform will be operated remotely from the Prelude FLNG facility and will only require periodic maintenance visits, significantly reducing the operational safety exposure to staff.
The services will be delivered over 18 months by Wood and KBR's engineering and project management teams in Perth, WA, supported by Wood's Kuala Lumpur resource base. The teams will provide a single integrated FEED for the Crux topsides, jacket, export pipeline, and subsea pipeline end manifold.
In the 4Q 2018 investor report, Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden said that four of the seven wells at Prelude have been opened. Commissioning and startup of the rest of the Prelude facilities “are progressing.” He added, “At the same time, we are producing condensate and preparing for the first condensate cargo to be loaded and later the first LNG cargo.
When fully operational, Prelude is expected to produce 3.6 mtpa of LNG and 1.7 million tonnes of natural gas liquids per year.
Shell Australia is the operator of the Crux field with SGH Energy and Osaka Gas as joint venture participants.