Shell is on its way to building the largest floating offshore facility in the world for its Prelude Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) Project in Australia. The FLNG facility will be 488 meters long and will weigh around 600,000 tonnes – roughly six times as much as the largest aircraft carrier. It will be longer longer and heavier than the new Maersk Triple E ships which, when delivered, will be 400 meters long. The FLNG will also be longer than the largest ship ever built, the Seawise Giant/Jahre Viking/Knock Nevis, which was scrapped in 2010. The Knock Nevis was 458 meters long, but did displace more, at 657,019 tonnes, than will the FLNG.
The FLNG will be deployed over the Prelude field located approximately 475 kilometres north-northeast of Broome, Western Australia, and over 200 kilometres from the nearest point on the mainland. The field is too far offshore to use conventional techniques of building gas-compression platforms and long subsea pipelines to shore. Instead, the natural gas will be liquefied on the vessel and loaded onto LNG ships for transport.