How is it and what is the largest ship in history

The Prelude is a platform 448 meters long. The best way to understand this length is to compare it with something more familiar.

Four pitches, one after the other, do not reach the length of Prelude. Nor would the Eiffel Tower or lying 443 meters from the Empire State of New York.
In terms of volume dimensions are too overwhelming: if you take six of the largest aircraft in the world, measuring the total amount of water that move would be roughly equivalent to what makes this boat.
Still under construction for the energy giant Shell, the dimensions of the platform are inherently awesome, but also show great determination of the gas industry and oil opened to new sources of energy.
Bright red, the Prelude is perched on the Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard on Geoje Island, South Korea. His side rises like a cliff and workers are seen as if they were ants.
Shortly after sunrise groups -electricistas workers, welders and builders andamios- gather for exercise and team meeting before entering elevators that go up to the equivalent of ten floors.

Aboard the Prelude, in a forest of cranes and pipes, it is almost impossible bearings.
Standing near the bow and looking back, the accommodation block that stands in the stern can barely glimpsed in the distance.
And the shipyard, one of the largest in the world, is a captivating vision, with its 30,000 employees working in the normally invisible infrastructure that caters Demana global fossil fuel: dozens of drill ships, storage tanks for oil and gas transporters .

The Prelude is not only the largest structure in the midst of all this activity, it is also a pioneering project in a new way to bring gas from the seabed to consumers willing to pay.
So far the gas from offshore wells had to be transported by pipeline to the mainland for processing and then liquefied for export.
Normally, this process involves building a huge infrastructure on land that can puficar gas and then cooling it until it becomes liquid, becoming what is called liquefied natural gas or LNG for its acronym in English.
In this state the gas is 600 times smaller in volume and therefore easier to transport by boat.
And there is much demand for LNG, especially in Asia, where Japan and India are the most energy-hungry markets.

With the Prelude, Shell has chosen to skip the step of having to bring the gas to shore.
Instead he developed a system that can do that job liquefaction at Sea, specifically it will in a gas to more than 160 miles away from the northwestern coast of Australia.
So the Prelude will become the first floating liquefied natural gas platform, or FLNG in the English industry terminology.
From the point of view of Shell, this strategy serves to save the costly process of building a pipeline to the Australian coast and build a LNG processing plant.
Both projects might face long battles of planning and require a multitude of infrastructure in a remote coastal area.
So live Prelude parked on a field for 25 years, is estimated.
There is only one gas extraction platform, but also a factory and warehouse, which transport ships can bring to load liquefied natural gas.

The computer animations make it seem all very easy.
In practice, the engineering challenge is immense.
To accelerate the construction of key elements of the gas processing system being assembled on the ground before being installed in the boat.
During our visit, we saw something remarkable: how to put on board a modulus of 5,500 tons.

As if it were a giant puzzle, had to fit in a space perfectly, especially considering that Shell is planning to build the processing plant for liquefied natural gas in a quarter of the space normally occupy on land.

Installation took less than a day, but clearly there is still much work to do.

Therefore Shell workers are evasive when giving a date on which the Prelude really start to work.

Risks

Shell ensures that the gas will have so much demand that prices will remain bullish enough to justify the cost of the Prelude, although I was not disclosed must reach the billions.
But there are obviously risks. Gas prices could collapse if China's economy plummets or if Japan resumes activity of its nuclear power plants, closed since the Fukushima disaster, and suddenly need less gas.
As the elevator floor we return to the dock, the winter sun sets over the yard with a golden light.
A convoy of buses carrying workers back home.
Overnight teams of specialists check the strength of welds and quality of the work done during the day.
Never before has piloted a project like this, and as long as you do something for the first time, the Prelude no longer a bet.

SOURCE: Bbc.uk.co