RAS LAFFAN, Qatar, 23 February 2007 — Qatar yesterday launched a mega gas-to-liquids (GTL) project in partnership with Royal Dutch Shell that will cost up to $18 billion, $10 billion of which have already been earmarked.
The foundation stone for a plant at Ras Laffan Industrial City, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the capital Doha, was laid by Crown Prince Tamim ibn Hamad Al-Thani and Britain’s Prince Charles, who arrived in Qatar from Kuwait on the second leg of a Gulf tour.
“A total of 10 billion dollars of contracts have already been awarded for the project, including all major engineering, procurement and construction,” which began in the third quarter of 2006, said a joint statement by state-run Qatar Petroleum (QP) and Anglo-Dutch energy giant Shell.
“The total cost of the project will be around $12 billion to $18 billion,” Simon Buerk, external affairs manager for the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa at Shell Gas and Power, told AFP on the sidelines of the ceremony.
The launch came two days after QP and US energy major ExxonMobil Corp. announced they had shelved plans for a multi-billion-dollar GTL project.
A development and production-sharing agreement on the new project, dubbed Pearl GTL, covers offshore and onshore project development and operation, with Shell providing 100 percent of funding, the statement said.
“Upstream 1.6 billion cubic feet (45.3 million cubic meters) of wellhead gas will be produced, transported and processed per day to produce 120,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of condensate, liquefied petroleum gas and ethane,” the statement said.
Downstream dry gas will be used as feedstock to produce 140,000 barrels per day of clean, high quality GTL fuels and products. The plant “is expected to produce some three billion barrels of oil equivalent wellhead gas over the period of the development and production sharing agreement,” it added.
Qatari Energy and Industry Minister Abdullah ibn Hamad Al-Attiyah, who chairs QP, said in remarks published yesterday that production would start in 2010.
