It will be the largest floating object in the world – the length of four football pitches and weighing as much as six aircraft carriers.
Shell today announced plans to build a giant floating gas refinery, named the Prelude, in a project that will cost $10billion.
The ship will allow gas extracted by drilling rigs and platforms far out at sea to be transferred to the ship for processing- removing the need for pipe lines to a refinery on land.
Shell today announced plans to build a giant floating gas refinery, named the Prelude, in a project that will cost $10billion.
The ship will allow gas extracted by drilling rigs and platforms far out at sea to be transferred to the ship for processing- removing the need for pipe lines to a refinery on land.
World’s largest floating object: The Shell Prelude will be 488 meters long and weigh 600,000 tones when fully laden
It means the company will be able to drill for gas in new fields hundreds of miles from the nearest land and will first be used in the company’s Prelude oil field 200km from the coast of West Australia.
The floating refinery is the next logical development for oil companies as new supplies of oil and gas get more remote and demand continues to increase.
And the company tried to ally environmental concerns, saying the ship – which is will be 488 meters long and weigh 260,000 tons unladen and 600,000 tons when filled with gas – had been designed to stay at sea in a Force 5 hurricane.
Gas from will be extracted from the ground by separate production platforms and then piped to the ship, where it will be liquefied by cooling it to minus 162C.
The process reduces the volume of the gas by 600 times.
The liquefied gas can then be transferred to tankers which can ship it anywhere in the world.
A South Korean shipyard is due to start building the vessel using five times more steel than was used to build the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It should be finished in 2017.
The ship will be moored at the Prelude gas field for 25 years where it is expected to produce the equivalent of 110,000 barrels of oil in gas a day.
Shell’s Malcolm Brinded said: ‘Our innovative FLNG tech will allow us to develop offshore gas fields that otherwise would be too costly to develop.
‘Our decision to go ahead with this project is a true breakthrough for the LNG industry, giving it a significant boost to help meet the world‘s growing demand for the cleanest-burning fossil fuel.’
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