Inpex said today that keel-laying is under way in South Korea on the giant floating production, storage and offloading vessel for its Ichthys gas project in Australia.

The Japanese player said the first block of the keel was placed during a ceremony at Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering’s shipyard in Okpo.

The keel is the structure within the hull around which the FPSO takes form.

Inpex said that, unlike traditional shipbuilding which celebrates keel laying as the start of work on a vessel, most of the Ichthys FPSO is being built in a modular fashion and incorporated in blocks before keel laying for faster sequencing.

Once completed, the FPSO will be towed 5600 kilometres to the Ichthys field off north-west Australia where it will be used to process and store the field’s substantial condensate reserves.

The FPSO will measure 336 metres in length by 59 metres in width. It is one of several offshore structures being built for Ichthys, which is due to produce first gas in 2016.