New Cargo Ship Is 488 Meters Long

An anonymous reader writes: The BBC reports on the construction of Prelude, a new ship that will be the world's longest vessel. It is 488 meters long and 74 meters wide, built with 260,000 tons of steel and displacing five times as much water as an aircraft carrier. Its purpose is to carry an entire natural gas processing plant as it sits over a series of wells 100 miles off the coast of Australia. Until now, it hasn't been practical to move gas that comes out of the wells with ships. The gas occupies too much volume, so it is generally piped to a facility on shore where it is processed and then shipped off to energy-hungry markets. But the Prelude can purify and chill the gas, turning it into a liquid and reducing its volume by a factor of 600. It will offload this liquid to smaller (but still enormous) carrier ships for transport.

Comments

Displacing five times as much water...

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be hard for it not to given that it weighs five times as much.

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[ColdWetDog]

Oh stop with the physics already. What do you think this is, a technology site?

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[bobbied]

It'd be hard for it not to given that it weighs five times as much.

Archimedes? Is that you?

Re:Displacing five times as much water...

[William Baric]

You could at least read the Wikipedia page you're linking :

for an object floating on a liquid surface (like a boat) or floating submerged in a liquid (like a submarine in water or dirigible in air) the weight of the displaced liquid equals the weight of the object.

Prelude to what?

[hooiberg]

If this is the mere Prelude, something truly gargantuan must appear shortly.

Not a cargo ship

[eastern]

The headline is wrong. This is not at all a cargo ship. It's more like an free-floating platform on which a gas refinery has been built. It will stay in place during its entire lifetime.

It should not even be compared to ships.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Anonymous Coward]

It should not even be compared to ships.

If it can move under it's own power it's a ship.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ArcadeMan]

Well, is it going to go there on its own power or will it have to be towed? If it can go there by itself, then it's a ship.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ColdWetDog]

Well,technically it's a ship, I think. A quick search did not answer the question as to whether it is self powered. If it is, it's a ship (certainly not a 'cargo' ship). If it isn't it is a barge according to maritime right-of-way rules.

It's friggin large whatever you want to call it.

Funny, Shell is going to spent $20 BILLION or so on this thing for a 25 year lifespan (and perhaps another 25 with a whole lot of refurb). That's a lot of solar panels, insulation, wind mills and hell, even a nuclear plant or two.....

Re:Not a cargo ship

[iggymanz]

"I am captain of the world largest ship, change course at once and give us right of way"
"I am a lighthouse bulb changer, your call"

Re:Not a cargo ship

[bobbied]

That's a lot of solar panels, insulation, wind mills and hell, even a nuclear plant or two.....

But, if they are thinking $20 billion is worth it, you can be it is going to process a LOT more than that number in gas. My guess is they are looking at around $10 Billion/year return from their investment which gives them a 5 year payoff with operational costs. This beast will likely produce $250 Billion in revenue with about half that being profit.

No "green energy" installation of the same price would come close to this kind of profit.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[geekoid]

You're numbers aren't even close:

3.6 million tonnes a year, projected.
http://www.bbc.com/news/scienc...

1 million metric tons LNG = 52 trillion Btus
http://www.extension.iastate.e...

3.6 * 52 trillion
that's about 175 trillion BTUs.

Current price ~10 dollars per million BTU.
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/his...

1.75 Billion a year, BEFORE cost of operation.

Once again, when not using made up numbers, Green energies are the same.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[DerekLyons]

Once again, when not using made up numbers, Green energies are the same.

Which is a very odd claim - since you produce no numbers whatsoever for "green" energy.

And you forget that natural gas isn't just a source of BTU's - it's also a major feedstock for a variety of industrial processes. (A significant portion of "oil derived" plastics are actually derived from natural gas.)

Re:Not a cargo ship

[Khomar]

It sounds like the plan is for this ship to be the first of several, so the question is how much of that $20 billion investment is for upfront costs (design, shipyard upgrades, construction equipment) that will not be duplicated in subsequent ships. As it is, the first ship looks to probably at least break even or even make a decent profit (provided it works as expected) with bigger profits hopefully to follow. I am sure these numbers have been gone over very carefully. You don't make an investment this large on a whim.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[ArcadeMan]

From the photo, this new cargo ship does look like a ship.

Re:Not a cargo ship

[bobbied]

It's called "sound business practice" and a few rules of thumb.

1. ROI must be break even in less than 5 years. So if you don't break even in that amount of time, you are wasting your investment dollars. If you are paying cash (not borrowing) to fund the project, you can possibly go longer, but you still need to show an annual return of better than 10% to make money over 10 years.

2. Manufacturing usually charges double the production cost for the product. Add up, labor, materials, energy, maintenance and all other production costs and that should be half the sales price. Out of the 50% you take your infrastructure costs, money costs and such to arrive at profit.

Of course all "rules of thumb" are just how the average works. There are exceptions to these rules.

That's pretty cool

[Cpt_Kirks]

162 C below zero

Re:An enormous natural disaster waiting to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Gob forbid all that natural gas leak into the water? Who will clean up a natural gas slick?

Something new for my oldest to get interested in

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Well now my oldest will be interested in a different ship other than the Maersk Triple Es. In his mind the bigger the better, so things like the Bagger 288, Big Muskie, The Captian, and the Cat 797 are the best things ever created.

A big boat!

[spaceyhackerlady]

I live in a port city and see lots of ships, but I'm not sure this baby could even enter the harbour here.

It's far bigger than what the Panama Canal can handle (maximum 290 meters long), as well as the Saint Lawrence Seaway (225 meters). The Panama Canal was designed for the largest ships of the day, RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic.

...laura

Re:A big boat!

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

The Panama Canal is being expanded to handle larger ships. These are "superpanamax".

In the US, harbors are in the middle of legal entanglements by environmentalists to deepen harbors by 5 feet to handle them, 7+ year battles, longer than the canal took.

Meanwhile, China is building an even bigger canal for even bigger ships.

The center of empire has shifted. The empire that keeps the trade routes open prospers. An empire that turns to lording over its own people falters.

Goodnight, Irene. Your kids will live in an economically broken.1984-like panopticon state ruled by populist memes.

Words don't matter. Actions and history do.

Built by Samsung

[Deflatamouse]

There's quite a bit of rounded edges on that ship. Watch out, Apple might sue.

Video

[koan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...