Qatar Economic Review 2006(September) - QNB

Al Khaleej Gas ProjectA Development and Production Sharing Agreement (DPSA) to tap additional North Field gas for domesticprojects and regional exports was signed in May 2000 by QP and ExxonMobil Middle East Gas MarketingLimited, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil Corporation.Under the Al Khaleej Gas Project, additional North Field gas will be developed through a new upstreamgas development, with power generation (Ras Laffan IWPP), the Oryx GTL project, and the MesaieedIndustrial Complex representing initial major users. The first phase of the project (AKG-1) began productionin November 2005. ExxonMobil intends to extend the Khaleej Gas Project to meet the domestic demandrelating to electricity, petrochemical, and other Qatari industrial uses.Natural Gas Liquids (NGL)NGL-1: The first NGL plant, commissioned in 1974, was established with the aim of utilising onshoreassociated gas from the Dukhan field. This facility provides for the NGL’s stripped from the Fahahil Plant(degassing, compressing and NGL stripping plant located along the Dukhan field) to be separated intoethane rich gas, propane, butane, and condensate.NGL-2: The second NGL plant, commissioned in 1980, was established with the aim of utilising offshoreassociated gas. This plant obtains NGL’s stripped from three offshore crude oil production platforms andseparates it into methane rich gas, ethane rich gas, propane, butane, and condensate.NGL-3: Also referred to as the North Field Gas Plant (NFGP), this plant was commissioned in 1991 anddebottlenecked in 1997, to process an additional 240 mn cf/d of gas from Qatargas. The NFGP wasoriginally designed to process raw gas and unstabilised condensate, separated from the North FieldAlpha Offshore field.NGL-4: The NGL-4 project is designed to increase the recovery of Natural Gas Liquids from the DukhanArab D reservoir and the North Field. The plant more than doubles QP’s NGL capacity and is dedicatedboth to export markets and to domestic demand which includes demand from the QAPCO and Q-Chemprojects.NGL-4 increases Qatar’s recovery of natural gas liquids from North Field Phase 1 of Ethane (875,000tpa), Propane (735,000 tpa) and Butane (490,000 tpa) to meet growing demand for these products asa petrochemical feed-stock.Gas to Liquids Projects (GTL)QP continues to research other avenues for the utilisation of the country’s natural gas resources.Technologies for the direct conversion of natural gas into globally marketable and more easily transportableliquid products have evolved significantly in recent years and are of particular interest as a potentialadjunct to direct exports of LNG and natural gas. QP has allocated QR 40 billion in its five year plan,starting 2006 for GTL projects. QP’s aim of progressing rapidly on GTL projects can be seen through thefollowing Oryx GTL project, and five other projects which are at various levels of negotiation.Oryx GTL ProjectOryx GTL, the world’s largest GTL plant became operational in June 2006. In July 2001, QP and SouthAfrica’s Sasol Synfuels International (Sasol) signed a joint venture agreement to develop a GTL projectat Ras Laffan with estimated costs of $1 billion. The project which is based on Sasol’s slurry phasedistillate technology, converts natural gas into 34,000 bpd of high grade fuels from two trains. The GTLplant uses as feed-stock about 330 mn cf/d of gas from the Al-Khaleej Gas Project, and has a capacityto produce around 24,000 bpd of high purity diesel, 9,000 bpd of naphtha and 1,000 bpd of LPG. Theproject gets its power requirements from the Ras Laffan IWPP, and its cooling requirements from the RasLaffan common sea water intake. QP and Sasol Chevron has signed a MOU for the expansion of theOryx GTL project, from 34,000 bpd to 100,000 bpd by 2010.KEY ECONOMIC SECTORS 24