Are offshore oil rigs going extinct? Meet Prelude: The world's largest ocean going vessel

At more than 1,600 feet long, Prelude is set to be the largest oceangoing vessel in the world.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The ship is under construction for energy giant Shell, and is being built in Korean shipyards. The brilliant red ship is longer than both the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building, and displaces as much water as six large aircraft carriers.

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Prelude is a testament to the drive and focus of the energy giants to open up new sources of fuel for the energy-hungry world, the first of a new kind of energy mining ship, and the largest.

Prior to Prelude, gas collected at an offshore platform had to be piped back to land for processing, then liquefied for export.

This involved a costly process where huge onshore facilities were required to both purify and liquefy the gas (via chilling), so that it formed a product called LNG (liquefied natural gas), which is about 600 times less dense than before.

From here the LNG has to be transported by ship to hungry markets, especially Asian markets, like China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

But in order to tap into an extensive and valuable gas field 100 miles northwest of Australia, Shell intends to skip the expensive pipe construction and LNG facility process, especially around a remote region of Australian coastline. Prelude will be the world's first floating LNG plant.

To act as a facility, Prelude will be parked above the gas field for about 25 years. She will not only harvest the gas, but act as the factory and store where tankers will pull alongside and load up.

Shell has created this entirely new concept because they believe that natural gas-the cleanest of all fossil fuels-is set to become more and more in demand, especially as a climate-friendly alternative to coal.

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