A few months ago , The New York Timessent a photographer to South Korea to photograph the cosmos ’s largest floating physical object . It choose him hundreds of shots to capture the monster . Now , its Creator are giving us a closer look at construction of the ship .
The object in question was Prelude , a skyscraper - sized rude accelerator pedal refinery that Shell is ramp up in South Korea by Samsung ’s Heavy Industries . The ship — if you could call it that — will ground itself to the sea story and not only extract natural gas , but process , elaborate , and liquefy it at sea . For a sense of scale leaf , it ’s only slimly smaller than Chicago ’s Willis Tower , change state on its side and launched into the overt ocean . It ’s all in avail of theincreasingly hard taskof finding enough gas to satiate global need — demand that is pushing gas companies further into the sea and deeper below the sea floor . progressively , company are building be adrift liquefied instinctive - gas vessel , or FLNGs , to streamline the process of drilling , extracting , and sue this gun .
The sizing of the investment — about $ 12.6 billion — and the unprecedented engineering science needed to suck even more gas out of the Earth is chilling and enchanting at the same time . DSP TVjust relinquish a newfangled devising - of video about Prelude which we ’ve annotated below , but you could check out the full television above .
A factory in Bilbao made the massive brand mountain range that will keep Prelude anchor to the sea floor — more than 10 mile , or 24,500 connection , are being made here .
In Samsung ’s shipyard in South Korea , workers are installing 280 Swedish mile of pipes on the Prelude ’s decks — all designed to move extracted gas through the onboard processing works .
In Sens , France , the robotic sleeve responsible for chilling the gas to -162 Anders Celsius — a cryogenic liquid , according to Shell — and putting it into storehouse are test .
A 50 - ton pump tower was cautiously lowered onto to the ship ’s store storage tank at Samsung ’s shipbuilding curtilage in Geoje , Korea .
In Dubai , a monolithic turret that will be used aboard Prelude was debase onto a ship spring for Geoje .
Since stay fresh the ship cast anchor to the sea bed is essential , the cables that will facilitate it to do so are the large ever made . Here ’s footage of one snapping under more than 2,500 tons of weight .
Back in Geoje , two crane lift and carry a accelerator processing faculty — one of several aboard Prelaude ’ float refinery — for installing aboard the ship , where it will stay for decades .
Shell
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