SYDNEY, June 30 (Xinhua) -- The world's largest floating gas facility left South Korea on Friday and is due to arrive at Browse Basin, 475 km off the northern coast of Western Australia in one month.

At 488 meters long, 74 meters wide and weighing in at about 260,000 tons, the Prelude Vessel is capable of extracting, refining, producing and offloading liquified natural gas (LNG) without having to pipe any of the commodity onshore.

Commissioned by Royal Dutch Shell, Prelude is able to tap remote gas fields, that would otherwise be economically unviable.

With the benefit of moving from one location to another, vessel is expected to produce 3.6 million tons of LNG per year.

Operations are expected to begin early in 2018.