(By Scott Parker) – The Shell Prelude is the largest ship ever constructed and work continues in a South Korean shipyard as you read this to get the humongous craft finished, even as world energy prices continue to plummet. Designed to be a massive, floating natural gas processing/refining operation the Shell Prelude is one of the boldest steps yet to create solutions to retrieving oil and gas from areas that were never before thought possible. In this case it is in the deep water off the coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean. While prices of oil and natural gas may be depressed at the current time, Shell is planning to get at least 25 years of service out of this ship, which has been estimated to cost 10-12 billion dollars with all of the materials involved and then the addition of what is essentially a refinery to its decks. Other options included constructing a pipeline and similar solutions which make te cost of the Shell Prelude look like smart money. Oil companies tend to find a way to make things pay off in their favor anyway so we’re not exactly worried about Shell.
The ship itself is just over 1,600ft long. That means you could run a quarter mile drag race on its decks and have 300ft to stop before going into the drink. Any takers? The ship displaces more water by itself than the six largest aircraft carriers in the world COMBINED. One thing that has not been released is what will actually be powering the ship through the water. They will not be small block Chevy engines, we can promise that. Engineered to withstand category five cyclones, it will not be doing a whole lot of cruising during its life. Rather it it will be stationed where the oil and gas are. Estimates put daily production on the ship at somewhere around the equivalent of 110,000 barrels of oil. WOW!
What’s interesting is that this is largely a full circle moment for Shell. The Shell company was formed by Englishman Marcus Samuel as a shipping company to haul oil around the world as the industry expanded to more and more places. It was Shell who had the first dedicated oil tankers and Shell who was constantly growing their fleet with ever more grand seagoing vessles before the turn of the 20th century. For them now to be embarking on this incredible project speaks to their history and it also speaks to a new era of oil and gas exploration as well as the brainy solutions humans will devise for bringing the dyno juice and gasses to the places we need them.
Shell Prelude truly is the 8th wonder of the world.
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