Petronas, Malaysia's state-owned oil and gas company, is set to deploy the world's first floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility.

Constructed by Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering, the floating facility fits an LNG processing train, including all utilities and support units, that traditionally is spread across an area of approximately one square mile into a 360m-long-by-40m-wide structure. The compact, mobile facility harbors the ability to extract natural gas from the wellhead; process the gas onboard prior to liquefaction; liquefy the natural gas to approximately minus 150 degrees Celsius (shrinking the gas volume by 600 times); and store the LNG in a dual-row membrane-type cargo containment system before offloading to LNG carriers.

PFLNG SATU has the capacity to produce 1.2 million metric tons of LNG per year. Image credit: Petronas. Petronas, which has named the new facility PFLNG SATU, says the ship is a game changer, as it paves the way for opportunities to monetize gas resources from remote, marginal and stranded fields that would otherwise be uneconomical to develop via conventional means.

PFLNG SATU will be moored at Malaysia’s Kanowit gas field, 180 kilometers offshore Sarawak and has the capacity to produce 1.2 million metric tons of LNG per year. With a design life of 20 years, the facility can be redeployed to other fields after each is depleted.

According to Petronas, an estimated 60% of the world’s natural gas is trapped in locations where conventional rigs and pipelines would not make economic sense to install. Deployment of PFLNG SATU—which Petronas says carries an environmental footprint one-third as large as a traditional onshore LNG plant—is expected to open up production sufficient to boost Malaysia's LNG production by almost 4%, to 32 million tons per annum.

PFLNG SATU is expected to set sail in the second quarter of 2016.