Constructed to pump an estimated 15.9 trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas from the Browse Basin off Australia’s northwestern shore, the Prelude isn’t just huge, it’s complex as well. Once moored to the ocean’s silty floor by groups of massive anchors, the Prelude will connect to a number of flowlines and wellheads that reach deep into the Earth to extract the natural gases.
Once dry gas has been removed from the Basin it’ll flow through a series of armored manifolds that will eventually terminate on the Prelude FLNG. Immediately upon coming aboard the gas will be cooled to 162 °C and take on a liquid form that will make volumes of energetic gas much easier to transport.
While the mechanics, construction and heft of the Prelude are amazing, the fact that the Prelude will be used as a processing facility has led its developers to consider it a “facility” and not a boat. Still, the category-5 hurricane resistant Prelude will also have three 6,700 horsepower engines.
But nomenclature aside, the shear magnitude of the Prelude project is an incredible testament to its designers, systems engineers and ship-builders – and it serves as a marker for our ability to build even the most seemingly infeasible, large and complex machines.
Image & Video Courtesy of The New York Times Magazine & Shell