Shell plc has suspended production at a floating facility for liquefied natural gas Off the west coast of Australia after a fire breaks out, cutting off fuel supplies to Asia as winter sets in and fuel consumption soars.
“Shell” said in a statement: “The small fire at the Prelude LNG facility was detected on Wednesday afternoon and was quickly contained using a hand fired extinguisher. Production has been temporarily halted and the cause of the incident is being investigated. investigation,” according to “Bloomberg” and viewed by “Al-Arabiya.” net”.
The outage comes after Prelude resumed downloads this week after nearly two months of maintenance. The outage is another setback for the world’s largest floating liquefied natural gas plant, which has suffered from persistent technical problems since it started operating in 2019.
The turmoil also threatens to exacerbate global energy shortages as winter LNG demand from Shell’s Asian customers peaks.
The London oil and gas major did not say when production would resume at the plant, which has the capacity to produce 3.6 million tonnes of LNG annually.
Downtime at the Prelude plant could force Shell to buy more supplies of LNG from the spot market to meet customer deliveries. The company has already purchased several spot cargoes of LNG for January delivery in China in recent months.
