Development drilling in the Prelude field was successfully completed in 2015. The development plan included seven horizontal wells to deliver high reliability production to the Prelude FLNG facility. The Prelude FLNG development in Australia will be the first deployment of Shell's Floating LNG technology.

There were a number of challenges associated with the Prelude field development plan. These included drilling the first horizontal wells in the basin, the need to meet FLNG operating constraints, and management of reservoir uncertainty. The challenges needed to be considered in the context of a limited intervention strategy, hence the need to "get it right the first time".

Challenges were addressed in three project phases. Firstly by thorough field development planning in the Concept Selection phase of the project, leading to a development concept that was robust across a range of reservoir uncertainties and risks. Next was extensive contingency planning in the pre-drill phase to enable structured and timely decision making to manage a range of subsurface outcomes and operational events. Finally during the execution phase, drilling was separated into two seasons to allow learnings from season 1 to be incorporated into season 2. The success of this approach was enabled by a fully integrated multidisciplinary team of Subsurface and Well Engineering staff supported by global expertise from within the Shell group.