Prelude FLNG Terminal

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Prelude FLNG Terminal is an operating LNG export terminal in Australia.

Location

Table 1: Location details

Name	Location	Coordinates (WGS 84)
Prelude FLNG Terminal	Browse Basin, Western Australia, Australia	-13.938845, 123.298190 (exact)

The map below shows the exact location of the terminal:

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Project Details

Table 2: Infrastructure details

mtpa = million tonnes per year

Name	Facility type	Status	Capacity	Total terminal capacity	Offshore	Associated infrastructure
Prelude FLNG Terminal	export	operating	3.6 mtpa	3.6 mtpa	True	Crux gas field

Table 3: Cost

Name	Facility type	Cost	Total known terminal costs
Prelude FLNG Terminal	export	US$17,433,600,000 (24,000,000,000 AUD)	US$17,433,600,000

Financing

No financing data available.

Table 4: Project timeline

FID = Final Investment Decision, used by some developers to indicate a project will move forward

Name	Facility type	Status	Proposal year	FID year	Construction year	Operating year	Inactive year
Prelude FLNG Terminal	export	operating	–	–	2012	2019	–

Ownership

Table 5: Ownership

Name	Facility type	Status	Owners	Parent companies	Operator
Prelude FLNG Terminal	export	operating	Shell PLC [67%]; CPC Corporation Taiwan [5%]; KOGAS Canada Ltd [10%]; INPEX Corp [17%]	Shell PLC [67.5%]; INPEX Corp [17.5%]; Korea Gas Corp [10.0%]; CPC Corporation Taiwan [5.0%]	Shell

Background

Prelude Floating LNG Terminal is an offshore LNG terminal under development in Western Australia, Australia. Its close neighbor is Inpex-owned Ichthys LNG Terminal.

Prelude is longest vessel ever built. It is 1,601 feet (488 meters) long and weighs about 600,000 metric tons.

Construction on Prelude began in late 2012.

The facility had announced legally binding buyer agreements.

As of early 2017 Prelude was still under construction. In June 2017 Prelude left the yard in South Korea, towed to Australia to be chained to the ocean floor off Australia. The first cargo of fuel is likely by mid-2018.

Reuters reported in October 2017 that Wheatstone LNG Terminal in Western Australia is the sixth out of eight projects in a $200 billion Australian LNG construction boom with two more facilities to be launched. The two remaining are Shell’s Prelude Floating LNG Terminal and Ichthys LNG Terminal owned by Japan's Ichthys.

The terminal began commercial operations in December 2018. After a series of safety incidents in late 2019 and early 2020 the terminal was shut down in February 2020 and remained shut down as of April 2020.

In April 2020, Shell announced that it was delaying a final investment decision, originally planned for 2020, on its Crux gas field in offshore Australia due to the economic downturn resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Crux project, also part owned by Osaka Gas, is intended to supply backfill gas to the Prelude facility.

In January 2021, LNG cargo shipments resumed at Prelude.

In July 2021, workers onboard Prelude made an official complaint to the offshore regulator, NOPSEMA, urging it to investigate alleged breaches of fatigue management standards as they claimed to having been forced to work on only two to three hours of sleep at certain periods over several months. Representing the workers, union group Offshore Alliance said that the situation "reflects the appalling [occupational health and safety] culture within a number of Prelude management ... It is only luck that there was not a serious accident or fatality during this period."

In May 2022, Shell Australia and SGH Energy took a final investment decision (FID) to develop the Crux gas field in Western Australia, which is expected to begin production in 2027 and supply up to 550 mmscfd (on an annual basis, a maximum equivalent to 4.2 mtpa) to Prelude FLNG Terminal.

In December 2025, Shell received approvals from NOPSEMA to move ahead with the development of the Crux gas field to backfill Prelude via a new 165km pipeline.

Outages

After a series of safety incidents in late 2019 and early 2020 the terminal was shut down in February 2020 and remained shut down as of April 2020.

In June 2020, and with operations at Prelude still frozen, growing skepticism emerged from global banking analysts about the vastly expensive project's economic feasibility. One assessment from Goldman Sachs reckons the project to be the world’s most expensive new LNG project with a “commercial break even” cost of almost $20 per thousand cubic feet. On this estimate, Prelude's material costs are more than double LNG from other new projects and four times the cost of LNG produced in Qatar, the world's LNG leader.

A further setback for the Prelude project took place in September 2020 when it was reported that Shell's efforts to bring the terminal back into production had been thwarted by a failed gas seal just days after the company had opened subsea wells for the first time in seven months. The seal's failure did not cause gas to escape but Shell was forced to stop gas flow as a precaution. In October 2020, Shell said that it did not expect full production at Prelude to happen before the end of the year and that it hoped to resume shipping in the first quarter of 2021. This will mean a full year of fixing problems at the floating terminal instead of producing.

In December 2021, Prelude FLNG was shut down because of a fire incident following a power outage. The facility resumed operations in April 2022.

On June 10, 2022, the Prelude facility was shut down due to industrial action taken by union workers over a pay dispute with the operator Shell. It was reported in mid-August 2022, with the dispute still not settled, that the industrial action was scheduled to continue until September 1. Union representatives estimated that the Shell's losses due to the production shutdown amounted to approximately $1.3 billion.

On September 19, 2022, Shell announced that production had restarted at the terminal and that the first LNG cargo since July was being prepared for send out.

In December 2022, production was again halted due to a small fire. The terminal resumed operations in January 2023.

In its 2023 World LNG Report, IGU reported that Prelude's performance in 2022 was far below that of the prior year, averaging a capacity utilization of just 32%.

In September 2023, Shell shut the terminal down for several months for scheduled maintenance. In December 2023, the terminal resumed operation after maintenance.

According to the 2025 GIIGNL report, "The facility reported improved reliability post-restart," after the Q4 2023 outage, "with no major interruptions anticipated until at least 2026."

In January and February 2025, Prelude underwent planned maintenance.

Natural gas in Australia

As of 2017, Australia is the second largest LNG exporter after Qatar. The country exports almost 44 million tons a year.

Prelude may position Australia to overtake Qatar as the world's biggest exporter of the fuel in the coming years.

Articles and Resources

Additional data

To access additional data, including an interactive map of LNG terminals, a downloadable dataset, and summary data, please visit the Global Gas Infrastructure Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.