This Is the Biggest Ship in the World

The FLNG Prelude, a Floating Liquified Natural Gas facility, is the largest floating vessel ever built, designed to extract and process natural gas offshore despite significant operational challenges.

• The FLNG Prelude is the largest floating vessel ever built at 488 meters long.

• It liquefies natural gas offshore, enabling access to remote gas fields.

• Despite its engineering marvel, the Prelude has faced significant operational issues, leading Shell to cancel future similar projects.

The FLNG Prelude, measuring 488 meters long, is identified as the largest floating vessel in history, surpassing even the historic oil tanker Seawise Giant. This colossal facility is designed to liquefy natural gas offshore, offering advantages like accessing remote fields and mobility. Despite its innovative design and massive scale, the Prelude has faced operational issues, leading Shell to scrap plans for similar future facilities.

Defining 'Largest Ship'

• 00:00:57 Defining the 'largest ship' is complex, as it depends on criteria like self-propulsion. While the FLNG Prelude, measuring 488 meters in length, is the largest vessel by pure size, it is not self-propelling. In contrast, the Seawise Giant, a former oil tanker at 458.46 meters long, holds the record for the longest self-propelling ship, famous for its immense size and maneuvering challenges before its dismantling.

FLNG Technology

• 00:02:43 The Prelude is an FLNG (Floating Liquified Natural Gas) facility that processes natural gas by chilling it to -162°C, reducing its volume by 600 times for efficient transport. This offshore facility extracts gas from underwater fields, purifies it, liquefies it, and stores it for carrier ships, offering advantages over land-based operations by enabling access to remote fields and mobility to move between depleted and new sites.

Prelude's Construction & Function

• 00:04:08 Shell's Prelude facility began operations in 2019 off Western Australia, constructed by over 5,000 people at Samsung Heavy Industries. Made of 260,000 metric tons of steel and moored by a massive 25,000-link chain system, it condenses a land-based LNG facility into a quarter of the space. The Prelude produces 3.6 million metric tons of LNG annually, shipping mostly to Asian markets, and also houses 200 personnel with amenities.

Operational Challenges & Future

• 00:06:27 Designed to withstand 1-in-10,000-year storms and Category 5 cyclones, the Prelude was intended for 50 years of operation across multiple gas fields. However, by 2022, it was deemed 'one of the biggest engineering disappointments' due to frequent shutdowns, power system failures, and other technical issues. Consequently, Shell has abandoned plans for building further FLNG facilities of this kind, leaving the Prelude's record as the largest ship secure for the foreseeable future.