Oil Giant to Construct World's Longest Floating Vessel

Having the goal of exploiting the Prelude gas field, located 475km north-east of Broome, Western Australia, the global oil and gas giant Shell looks forward to building the world's longest floating vessel.

The Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) plant will be 468 meters long.

The reason that Shell decided to build the longest floating vessel ever is because the gas field is found too far from land, which makes it difficult to use a pipeline that would connect the extraction rig to liquefaction plant located on shore.

It would be interesting to note that if built, the FLNG plant will be 10 meters longer than the Knock Nevis, the world's largest supertank that was scrapped in 2009.

The vessel will displace 600,000 tons of water, which is 6 times the amount of water displaced by the US Navy's Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, informs New Scientist.

After carrying out an environmental impact evaluation, the Australian government will decide whether to give the project a green light. In case the project is given the go-ahead, the engineers will start the construction of the vessel in a Korean shipyard. Afterwards the vessel will be towed to the Prelude field.