OXFORDSHIRE scientists have helped to pull the world's largest floating structure across 4,000 miles of ocean.

Experts at HR Wallingford created a simulation for hauling the floating gas station the size of four football pitches.

The simulators, not unlike a computer game, recreated the conditions expected to be faced when the massive structure was moved in real life.

The 488-metre Prelude station is a new Floating Liquefied Natural Gas Facility (FLGF) owned by oil and gas giant Shell.

Once in position it will take gas from a ‘field’ under the sea bed and turn it into liquid before ships come and take it to be sold as fuel for cars, or to heat cookers.

In June of this year the huge facility was in South Korea, where it had been built, awaiting the 4,000-mile move across Philippine Sea to Australia.

Four weeks later, and after months of training using Oxfordshire and Australian simulators, it arrived off the coast of Western Australia, where it is due to remain for 25 years.

Tow masters, tug masters and pilots spent a month in Fremantle, Australia, where HR Wallingford scientists ran six connected simulators recreating the move.

One of the pilots using those simulators was Captain Roy Lewisson, master of the Deep Orient.

Once the Prelude arrived in Australia, his crew were in charge of connecting Prelude to its 16 mooring lines, which will stop the facility floating away from its final position.

He said being able to visualise the journey before it took place was a bonus for crew, especially as it had never been done before ‘in oil and gas history.’

The latest use of the simulators comes just a month after HR Wallingford’s experts created a similar reproduction for the world's second largest container ship.

Prelude arrived at its home over a remote gas field 475 miles off the coast of Western Australia on Tuesday, July 25, after four weeks at sea.

The Indian Ocean-based gas station was pulled to its final position by 700 metre-long wires, weighing about 30 tonnes.

Three ships were dwarfed by their charge as they pulled the structure to its final destination.

A spokesman for HR Wallingford said: "The thing about Prelude is that it’s not really a ship. It’s a massive floating natural gas facility.

"Training using the navigation simulation has been carried out both at the UK Ship Simulation Centre in Wallingford, and then in February this year in Australia.

"We have been involved with this project for more than five years so far, and the company will continue to work with Shell on this project in the future, including training their staff, and developing the system."