Prelude FLNG
Shell · FLNG · In service · built by Samsung Heavy Industries
Prelude is the asterisk on every 'longest ship' list: at 488 metres she out-measures even Seawise Giant, but she is a moored gas factory, not a self-propelled ship.
Derived metrics
Computed by ships.fyi from the core specification — see how we calculate these.
How big is it, really?
The Prelude FLNG's length overall, against things you already know the size of.
The 747-8 bar is the longest airliner ever built — our sibling site aircraft.fyi measures everything that flies the same way.
One Prelude FLNG = 1.81 Titanics · 4.6 football pitches · 20 blue whales · 6.4 Boeing 747-8s laid end to end.
The numbers
| Length overall | 488 m — longest floating structure ever |
|---|---|
| Beam | 74 m |
| Displacement (fully ballasted) | ≈600,000 t |
| Steel used | ≈260,000 t |
| Function | Floating liquefied natural gas facility — produces, liquefies, stores and offloads at sea |
| LNG capacity | ≈3.6 million t per year |
| On station | Browse Basin, off Western Australia, since 2017; first LNG 2019 |
| Propulsion | None — towed to station and permanently moored by turret |
Put the Prelude FLNG next to something
Last verified: 2026-07-15 · Spot an error? business@luck.fyi
What makes it different
Prelude settles the pub argument on a technicality. Is she the longest ship ever? She is 488 metres — nearly 30 longer than Seawise Giant — and she floats, but she has no engines and will never make a voyage: she was towed from Korea to a gas field off Western Australia in 2017 and moored there, by design, for a working life of twenty-five years. Longest floating structure ever built: yes. Longest ship: this site gives that to Seawise Giant, and says why.
What she actually is may be more impressive than the record: an entire LNG plant — wells' processing, liquefaction to minus 162 degrees, storage and tanker offloading — compressed onto one hull holding around 260,000 tonnes of steel, displacing some 600,000 tonnes fully ballasted, built to ride out Category 5 cyclones swinging on her mooring turret rather than leaving station.
Her operating record has been as rocky as her construction was audacious: an electrical fire and months-long shutdown in 2021–22, industrial action, and repeated production halts have made Prelude the case study both for and against floating LNG. She remains, either way, the largest object humanity has ever set afloat.
The Prelude FLNG line
One of a kind
Who operates the Prelude FLNG
All 1 operator of record, verified 2026-07-15. Figures marked ≈ are approximate.