The company was ordered by the offshore regulator, NOPSEMA, to shut down the facility in December, following a small fire caused by an electrical fault which tripped the facility's main power, forcing the company to use back up diesel generators and evacuate staff. 

A report from the regulator has since suggested a power outage could have led to ‘catastrophic failure' on the vessel.

Shell CEO Ben van Beurden told reporters following last night's quarterly results that the company encountered an electrical fault in the battery systems associated with the uninterruptible power supply. 

"Prelude is going through some teething troubles but bearing in mind this is a unique asset of course, quite a unique challenge as you can imagine," he said. 

"We need to resolve these issues comprehensively and carefully before we restart." 

He said Western Australia's tight border control was making it "difficult to get people in", due to the 14-day quarantine requirements.  

"To get a vendor specialist in means that person will have to quarantine for weeks before they can go on board, so these problems compound the issue a little bit but also we want to make sure when we restart that we have resolved the problem." 

He said the company was working closely with NOPSEMA to fix the issues on board the facility, but it would likely remain offline for "most of Q1". 

A NOPSEMA spokesperson told Energy News this morning Shell has been holding weekly update meetings with NOPSEMA on its progress restoring the facility. 

To resume production, Shell must complete an investigation into the December incident and create and execute a timely plan to implement all nessesary corrective measures, according to NOPSEMA. 

"Shell must also demonstrate to NOPSEMA that the facility can operate safely in the event of powe loss before production can recommence," the spokesperson said.  

"It is currently expected that compliance with the General Direction could occur sometime in late Q1 2022, with production only able to resume once that has occurred."

The shutdown ended the 11-month production streak Shell's A$24 billion facility was on, after being shut in for most of 2020 due to a slew of technical issues. 

The facility hit its nameplate capacity of 3.6 million tonnes of LNG per annum in the middle of last year for the first time since start up.