World's largest floating gas facility ships first delivery

SYDNEY, June 11 (Xinhua) -- Royal Dutch Shell's new floating gas facility has dispatched its first shipment of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to Asia, setting sail from the coast of Western Australia on Tuesday.

Named Prelude FLNG, the multi-billion-dollar mega ship is 488 meters long, 74 meters wide and weighs about 600,000 tons, making it the largest of its kind anywhere in the world.

As a state-of-the-art engineering feat, the facility is able to extract, refine, produce and offload LNG without having to pipe any of the commodity onshore.

Loaded directly onto another vessel called the Valencia Knutsen 475 km off the northern coast of Broome, the first shipment is now on its way to various locations across Asia.

Expected to produce in excess of 3.6 million tons of LNG per year, Royal Dutch Shell's Integrated Gas and New Energies Director Maarten Wetselaar said, "Prelude forms an integral part of our global portfolio and plays an important role in meeting the growing demand for more and cleaner energy for our customers around the world."

"Today's first shipment of LNG departed from Prelude FLNG safely and everyone involved should be very proud of the work taken to reach this important milestone."Combining with joint-venture partners INPEX, KOGAS and OPIC, Chairman of Shell Australia Zoe Yujnovich said "we are proud to work with our local communities, suppliers and partners to ensure its safe, reliable operations into the future."