It’s the largest structure ever sent to sea – and it’s hella big. The Prelude is as long as the Empire State Building is high, plus another 150 feet.

Courtesy of Shell, this 1,601-foot ship weighs 600,000 tons and is 243 feet wide. The larger than large ship was put together on the South Korean coast for a year, where it’s just set sail.

But – here’s the catch- it’s not only a ship. Shell is taking an entire gas plant to sea. The Prelude is the world’s first Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) and will be posted off the coast of Western Australia where it will stay for the next quarter century.

The Prelude is designed to do everything from capturing and processing to storing liquid natural gas, and will refine 3,9 million tons each year before it’s offloaded onto smaller ships that bring it back to the mainland. That’s enough natural energy to power Hong Kong.

There’s also a 305-foot-tall turret that anchors the ship to the seafloor and allows it to rotate in accordance to wind direction.

[Source : Wired, YouTube]