The largest floating natural gas facility ever built has left Korea bound for waters off the north west of Western Australia.

The Prelude is the first floating liquified natural gas (FLNG) facility commissioned by Royal Dutch Shell, and it means the company will not have to pipe gas onshore for processing.

All extraction, refining, production and offloading of the LNG will be undertaken on the vessel, which will be moored over the Browse Basin, 475 kilometres off the coast of Broome.

The Prelude is 488 metre long, 74 metres wide and took 260,000 tonnes of steel to build, which is five times that used on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

It will produce 3.6 million tonnes per year of LNG and 1.3 m/t of condensate, a hydrocarbon liquid that is present within the gas.

The company opted for a floating facility that can be moved from one gas reservoir to another, enabling them to economically access fields that would otherwise be too difficult and too costly to develop.

The Prelude is being towed to Australian waters and is expected to arrive within the month.

It will be operated by Shell and its joint venture partners INPEX (17.5 per cent) KOGAS (10 per cent) and OPIC (5 per cent).

Production is expected to commence in early 2018.

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