MOSCOW (MRC) -- Petronas has announced that its first floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, PFLNG Satu, has successfully produced its first drop of LNG from the Kanowit gas field, offshore Sarawak, Malaysia, as per Apic-online.
The 1.2-million-t/y PFLNG Satu reached its final stages of commissioning and start-up with the introduction of gas from the KAKG-A central processing platform on 14 Nov. 2016. The gas was treated and liquefied via its nitrogen-based liquefaction unit and processed into LNG.
Petronas expects PFLNG Satu to lift its first cargo and achieve commercial operations in the first quarter of 2017.
"The operational milestone marks a decade long journey for Petronas since conceptualizing a floating LNG facility to maximize the potential of remote and stranded gas reserves to deliver a game changer in the global LNG business," the company noted.
Petronas is building a second floating LNG facility in Malaysia, based on Air Products' technology, with a capacity of 1.5-million t/y. Petronas earlier said that start-up was scheduled by early 2018.
PFLNG 2 will extract gas from the Rotan field in the South China Sea, offshore Sabah, Malaysia. Cost of the projects was not given.
As MRC informed previously, Petronas postponed the start-up of its USD16bn Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (RAPID) project in Johor to mid-2019, citing a drop in oil prices over the past year.
Petronas plans to build a C6-based metallocene linear LDPE plant and a low density polyethylene (LDPE)/ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) swing plant at its greenfield integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in southern Johor state by mid-2019. The proposed metallocene LLDPE will have a capacity of 350,000 tpa, while the LDPE/EVA will have a capacity of about 150,000 tpa. The two plants are part of Petronas' planned Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development project in Pengerang at Johor.
Besides, in November 2015, Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd awarded a USD482m contract to build a polypropylene (PP) plant at its new world-scale RAPID refining and petrochemicals site in Malaysia to Italy’s Technimont and China’s Huanqiu Contracting & Engineering. The firms will build two 450,000 t/y PP units at Petronas’ Refinery and Petrochemicals Integrated Development (RAPID) complex in Pengerang, Johor. The units will use Spheripol and Spherizone process technologies licensed from LyondelBasell. The work is set to be completed in April 2019.
Thus, RAPID includes a 300,000 bpd refinery and a petrochemical complex with a 3 million tpa steam cracker. The petrochemical complex will have the capacity to produce 7.7 million tpa of petrochemical products.
Petronas, short for Petroliam Nasional Berhad, is a Malaysian oil and gas company wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia. The Group is engaged in a wide spectrum of petroleum activities, including upstream exploration and production of oil and gas to downstream oil refining; marketing and distribution of petroleum products; trading; gas processing and liquefaction; gas transmission pipeline network operations; marketing of liquefied natural gas; petrochemical manufacturing and marketing; shipping; automotive engineering; and property investment.
MRC