Page 36: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (July 2014)

While not “faster than a speeding bul- let,” Shell’s shipzilla Prelude is certainly more powerful than a speeding locomo- tive, and will be able to leapfrog in size, many of the world’s tallest buildings. By any defi nition, the super-size Prelude fl oating liquid natural gas (FLNG) ves- sel is gargantuan. And yet it is designed to cram everything you’ll fi nd in a full- size, shore-based processing plant into roughly a quarter of the space.

Longer than four soccer fi elds and dis- placing six times as much water as the largest aircraft carrier, the FLNG facility will be the biggest fl oating production facility in the world when it debuts at some point in 2017 at an estimated cost of nearly $11 to $13 billion.

Investors in the Prelude Project include operator Royal Dutch Shell (67.5%), In- pex 17.5%, Korea Gas Corp. (Kogas) 10%, and Taiwan’s CPC 5%.

It can be hard to grasp the breadth and depth of a project of this scope but a picture is still worth a thousand words, so here are a few to help put things into perspective: Contents of 175 Olympic Swim- ming Pools – Amount of liquefi ed gas that can be stored in the facility’s storage tanks below deck. Six Nimitz–Class aircraft carriers - The amount of water the 200,000-tonne

Prelude will displace fully loaded. The facility will weigh in at around 600,000 tonnes fully loaded, or six times as much as the largest aircraft carrier. Four soccer fi elds Plus – Equiva- lent length of the vessel, which will measure nearly half a kilometer in length (488 meters/1600 ft.), making it a few meters longer than the biggest oil tank- ers and almost as long as the fourth larg- est building in the world – the Shanghai

World Financial Center, which stands at 492 m. The facility is also 74m wide. Arc de Triomphe - A structure that size could fi t inside Pre- lude’s 93-meter (305-foot) high mooring turret, which will run through the facil- ity. Two iconic bridges - Prelude will use 260,000 tons of steel, about fi ve times more than was used to build the

Sydney Harbour Bridge, and three times as much steel as was used to build the

Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Other numbers that help illustrate the story: 3 trillion Estimated number of cubic feet of liquids-rich gas in Shell’s combined Prelude and Concerto fi elds. $30 billion The amount

Shell is willing to spend up to in devel- opment, in the Australian region over the next fi ve years. 50 million liters The amount of cold water that will be drawn from the ocean every hour, to help cool the natu- ral gas. $45 million Expected boost to the local economy, including 1,000 jobs. 5.3 million tonnes The amount of liquids Prelude is expected to produce on an annual basis: 3.6 million tonnes of

LNG, 1.3 million tonnes of condensate and 0.4 million tonnes of LPG. 117% The amount of Hong Kong’s

MR 75TH ANNIVERSARY

Prelude By the Numbers 1.6 million ... the number of engineering man hours in the

FEED phase.

Out at sea, look! It’s a ship! It’s a fl oating rig! It’s SuperFLNG!

By Patricia Keefe

Prelude will consume more than 260,000 tons of steel, more than 5 times the steel used on the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge and 3 times the steel used on the Golden Gate Bridge. 220 220 km of piping will be installed on the Prelude FLNG 36 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News • JULY 2014

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