Royal Dutch Shell said on Thursday its Prelude floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) project off Australia, off line since early February, is working on restarting operations but would not resume full production this year. 

The troubled Prelude FLNG platform was shut down following an electrical trip and Shell has faced a number of issues over the past few months in trying to restart full production and now does not expect to ship any LNG before next year.

Full production is not expected to resume before year-end. Prelude is a multi-decade project, and our focus is on delivering sustained performance over the long term,” Shell said in a statement.

The company hopes to resume shipping LNG from Prelude in the first quarter of 2021, a person familiar with the situation said.

The $17 billion Prelude project, centered around the world’s biggest floating liquefaction vessel, has been plagued with problems. It shipped its first cargo only last year, more than two years behind schedule, and has yet to achieve steady output at its design capacity of 3.6 million tonnes a year of LNG.

The project is jointly owned by Shell, Japan's Inpex Corp, Korea Gas Corp, and a unit of Taiwan's CPC Corp.

(Reporting by Sonali Paul; Editing by Richard Pullin and Christian Schmollinger)