Let’s talk about Shell’s Prelude FLNG, a.k.a. the biggest corporate midlife-crisis purchase ever parked on the ocean. Shell didn’t just build a platform; they launched a 488-meter-long, 74-meter-wide, 600,000-tonne floating factory that maritime media straight-faced called “the largest offshore structure ever built”—and, yes, “it displaces six times as much water as the largest aircraft carrier.”
Anchored some 475 km (295 miles) off Australia, Prelude was moored with 16 giant chains to a 93-meter turret—“secured to the seabed by mooring lines”—so the behemoth could spin with cyclones and still keep pumping. Very metal. Very expensive. And very on-brand for a company that thinks the solution to climate and cost risk is… more steel.
Ah, Shell. The same company that has perfected the art of environmental destruction, employee exploitation, and moral bankruptcy now wants us all to get excited about its shiny new biofuels project in Brazil. Because, apparently, nothing says “we care about the planet” like an oil giant boasting about squeezing a few more drops of ethanol out of sugarcane while continuing to plunder the earth’s resources.
CITY
EXPERT COMMENT ON THE ARTICLE…
The Maritime Executive
