KUALA LUMPUR, June 25 — Petronas held a steel cutting ceremony for the hull of its first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility yesterday at the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) shipyard in Okpo, South Korea.

The ceremony marks a major milestone for the project, the world’s first, and enables it to proceed to the construction phase to meet the commissioning schedule in 2015.

It was led by Petronas President and Group Chief Executive Officer, Tan Sri Shamsul Azhar Abbas, while jointly hosted by Technip’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Thierry Pilenko and DSME’s President/ Chief Executive Officer, Jaeho Ko.

In a statement, Petronas said it signed the engineering, procurement, construction, installation and commissioning contract for the project with Technip and DSME consortium in June last year.

It said the FLNG facility will be located in Malaysia’s Kanowit gas field, 180 kilometres offshore Sarawak, and has the capacity to produce 1.2 million tonnes per annum of LNG.

Once operational, the facility is expected to change the landscape of the LNG business.

Where the liquefaction, production and offloading processes of LNG was previously only possible at onshore plants, it can now be carried out hundreds of kilometres away from land and closer to offshore gas sources.

"As such, the facility will also play a significant role in efforts to unlock the gas reserves in Malaysia’s remote and stranded fields, currently deemed uneconomical to develop and evacuate," Petronas said. — Bernama