This is a picture of the new 480 meter long vesseldue to be comissioned by the Dutch petrochemical company Shell. It will be a floating natural gas extraction, refining and storage facility. It has been designed to meet the needs of today's natural gas market.
Distance
As we have heard over and over in recent history, the earth's oil and gas are running out and as a result, more extreme enviroments must be braved to unearth the natural resources we need. This new vessel will be the first giant development to that end. The vessel, as yet unnamed, will be moored 200 miles from the northern coast of Australia to harvest gas from a natural gas field in that area. The vessel overcomes the need for pipes to be laid on the seabed. This is important because being 200 miles away from land, the gas cannot be tapped and recovered through seabed pipes. It also gives a nod to sustainable, reusable, mobile infrastructure as once the gas in the field is depleted, the huge vessel can be towed to the next field for exploitation.
Shipping and transport
The vessel, once moored, will spend 25 years working on the one field, in the same place, in open sea. This means that it needs to withstand massive storms and the gas needs to be transported to the mainland. The vessel has been designed to withstand the most ferocious of storms and the vessel's gas storage tanks are used to fill empty sea-going LNG tankers which will transport the gas to nearby China, Australia, Japan and South Korea as it's expected main buyers. After the field is depleted, it will be refurbished then sent to work on another gas field to sustain supply to buyers. Shell expects 2-3 of these vessels to be built to order from Samsung Heavy Industries Shipyards in Japan
