Posted on 05/20/2011 3:29:29 PM PDT by Teflonic
It will be the largest floating object in the world - the length of four football pitches and weighing as much as six aircraft carriers.
Shell today announced plans to build a giant floating gas refinery, named the Prelude, in a project that will cost $10billion.
The ship will allow gas extracted by drilling rigs and platforms far out at sea to be transferred to the ship for processing- removing the need for pipe lines to a refinery on land.
It means the company will be able to drill for gas in new fields hundreds of miles from the nearest land and will first be used in the company's Prelude oil field 200km from the coast of West Australia.
The floating refinery is the next logical development for oil companies as new supplies of oil and gas get more remote and demand continues to increase.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
According to the article, this doesn’t have anything to do with avoiding regulations.
Louisiana could use some of these floating refineries next time the Mississippi floods.
It is implied as land refineries would be much more economical. Not to mention the increased risk to the tankers carrying refined gas rather than crude.
So far, no one has read the article.
Not oil. Natural gas. Although there are likely to be some "heavies" (C2, C3, C4, and sometimes even out to C8, but rarely higher).
Not very economical in the USA, given the recent gigantic finds of shale gas.
I've read in various places that the economics of shale petroleum extraction are prohibitive. On the other hand, I've read that "fracking" is economically feasible, but that it leaves an unstable geology behind. Any thoughts on these issues?
Notice WHERE it’s being built?
Look for the Union label, then run the other way!
The U.S. has also loaned $2.84 billion for upgrades to an oil refinery in Cartagena, Columbia. Because the permitting regulations are so excessively onerous and radical environmentalists keep proposed projects tied up in litigation, there has not been a new major refinery built in the U.S. in 35 years, so increasingly we are forced to not only import crude oil, but refined gasoline, as well.
He could remove Lisa Jackson at the EPA who has turned a “regulatory firehose” on the energy industry and U.S. business according to the Wall Street Journal. In just two years, Jackson has proposed or finalized 29 major regulations and 172 policy rules.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2722605/posts
this as regarding crude oil,not natgas...but we get the picture.
The headline is incorrect. It doesn’t refine oil at all.
Fracking has been a common practice in Texas for sixty years.
Whatever you're reading that mentions "unstable geology" is a piece of environmental propaganda BS.
Sorry, there's no other way to put it.
I didn’t read the whole article but seems to me that this is a quicker way for refined gas to get to market from remote places.
And it's not a refinery. It's a floating "gas plant".
Natural gas naturally occurs in oilfields (just as crude oil -- or "distillates" -- occur naturally in gas fields).
Heretofore, that natural gas which was captured by production platforms in oilfields has been flared off -- there being no economically feasible way of storing and transporting the gas to shore.
The "Prelude" solves the economic feasibility issue -- collecting and processing the gas, then trans-shipping the product to a tanker.
It's not "refined gasoline", it is "processed natural gas".
The report is a nest of inaccuracies.
Kind of like floating at the end of a long torch. Scary.
Lots of “pluses” to the concept, not least of which are avoiding some of the more onerous “on shore” environmental regulations imposed upon on-shore refining by the “watermelons”, .......
Not being critical, I’m largely in favor. >PS
Not really. There are, perhaps, a dozen gas plants within thirty miles of where I sit.
Nary a one has lit off...
But that's not to say there isn't some danger involved. Instead, it's to say that the industry's safety standards are appropriately rigorous.
I think you may be confusing oil sands (petroleum) with shale gas. This is the latter. No oil to be extracted.
"On the other hand, I've read that "fracking" is economically feasible, but that it leaves an unstable geology behind. Any thoughts on these issues?"
The amount of rock that is "fractured" is miniscule compared to the total shale mass. Probable effect = zero.
I think this Prelude is going to be built by Honda in Japan.
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