Malaysia wants to beat Shell with first floating LNG facility

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(Dow Jones; June 4) - Malaysian oil and gas company Petroliam Nasional, or Petronas, is pushing ahead with its floating liquefied natural gas facility project and says it will compete with Shell's floating LNG plant to be the world's first of its kind.

Petronas has made a final investment decision to go ahead with development of a floating LNG facility in Sarawak state on the island of Borneo, which it hopes to commission in 2015, the company's chief executive, Shamsul Azhar Abbas, said June 4. Petronas' floating LNG facility project will provide "a strategic solution to monetize marginal and stranded gas fields," the company said in a recent investor review. The floating factory would produce, liquefy, store and load the gas into tankers for delivery.

Shell is building its floating LNG plant to develop the Prelude gas fields 120 miles off Western Australia's Kimberly Coast. The Prelude LNG floating terminal is expected to cost $10 billion to $12 billion and come online in 2016. Six times heavier than the world's biggest aircraft carrier and 1,600 feet long, Prelude will float in waters 820-feet deep off Australia's northwestern coast. It will be capable of producing about 500 million cubic feet of gas per day, in addition to condensate and liquefied petroleum gas.

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