The Pearl Gas to Liquids (GTL) Project, the largest GTL plant in the world was inaugurated by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, The Emir of Qatar.
CEO of Shell Peter Voser said: “The inauguration of Pearl GTL represents an historic milestone for Shell, and for our industry as a whole. It marks the culmination of five years of project delivery, and over 35 years of Gas to Liquids technology development at Shell. We are proud of what has been accomplished and privileged to have contributed to Pearl GTL’s success with our innovation, technology and project delivery capabilities.”
Visiting dignitaries including HRH Prince Andrew, The Duke of York, toured the facility and were briefed on the state-of-the-art technologies used to convert natural gas resources from Qatar’s North Field into high quality liquid fuels and products that will be sold at premium all over the world.
Pearl GTL has been jointly developed by Qatar Petroleum and Shell creating an additional route for Qatar to generate value from its enormous supply of gas. Using innovative technology and engineering, Pearl GTL turns natural gas into high quality liquid fuels and products, thereby realising the full upside of accessing the oil markets.
Pearl GTL is a fully integrated upstream/downstream, world-scale project located in Ras Laffan Industrial City, 80 km north of Doha. It captures the full value chain from offshore development through onshore gas processing to refining of finished products and the distribution of these products right across the world in one project. When fully operational, Pearl GTL will have the capacity to produce 140,000 barrels a day of high quality GTL products (gasoil, naphtha, kerosene, normal-paraffin and lubricants base oils), thereby help meet the increasing global demand for high quality hydrocarbon. It will also produce 120,000 barrels a day of Natural Gas Liquids (liquefied petroleum gas and condensate) and ethane.
The project is being developed in two trains and major construction was completed at the end of 2010. The first train started up in Q1 2011 and the first commercial shipment of gasoil was exported in June 2011. The second train of the plant started up in November 2011 by bringing in sour gas from offshore wells. The gas processing plant has come quickly on line delivering on-spec gas, condensate, LPG and sulphur. The first of the four world scale Air Separation Units in Train 2 is also on-line producing on-spec oxygen.
