Offshore staff
DOHA, Qatar – Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, has inaugurated the Pearl Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) Project, claimed to be the world’s largest GTL plant.
Shell CEO Peter Voser said the inauguration “marks the culmination of five years of project delivery, and over 35 years of Gas to Liquids technology development at Shell.”
Pearl GTL is an integrated upstream/downstream project developed jointly by Qatar Petroleum and Shell, located in Ras Laffan Industrial City, 80 km (49.7 mi) north of Doha. The project encompasses the full chain from offshore development through onshore gas processing to refining of finished products and distribution worldwide.
When fully operational, it will have the capacity to produce 140,000 b/d of GTL products including gasoil, naphtha, kerosene, normal-paraffin and lubricants base oils), and 120,000 b/d of NGLs and ethane.
The project is being developed in two trains, with the main construction completed at the end of 2010. The first train started up in 1Q 2011 and the first shipment of gasoil followed in June 2011.
Train 2 started up this month by bringing in sour gas from offshore wells, and the gas processing plant is on line delivering on-spec gas, condensate, LPG and sulfur. The first of four air separation units in Train 2 is also on-line producing on-spec oxygen.
At peak 52,000 construction workers from 60 countries worked on the project, which took 500 million hours to design and build.
11/23/2011
