The Future of Gas to Liquids as a Gas Monetisation Option

The paper introduces gas to liquids (GTL) as a monetising option from a technology, marketing and project perspective. GTL is complementary to LNG and pipelines. At the same time, using natural gas as a source for fuels in the form of GTL helps countries around the world to diversify their energy supplies. Furthermore, gas-based products are inherently cleaner than oil products. Shell's proprietary GTL technology or SMDS (Shell Middle Distillates Synthesis), is discussed in some detail. The paper also covers the challenges for successful implementation of GTL projects and why Shell is well positioned to take a lead in the industry on the basis of its long standing and broad experience in GTL research, plant operations, marketing and excellent track record in mega projects in the last thirty years. Shell's commitment to GTL is best demonstrated by the recent signing of a Heads of Agreement with Qatar Petroleum for the construction of the world's largest GTL plant. A key success factor is Shell's experience with marketing quantities of high quality GTL products from its 12,500 barrels per day plant at Bintulu, Malaysia since 1993. Further marketing opportunities will arise when new GTL capacity comes on-stream in the middle east when more quantities will become available to bulk users. Amongst the most interesting market will be automotive transportation, where clean GTL fuels can be positioned as an 'alternative fuel beyond oil' providing energy security to host countries. Shell is actively engaging with a number of regulators, automotive companies and governments worldwide including China, to demonstrate the performance of GTL and its cost effectiveness in reducing local emissions. An added benefit is that GTL can use existing infrastructure and requires no investment. Finally, the paper briefly discusses the coal to liquids (CTL) process as an alternative route to produce high quality GTL products and the key issues relating to the process.

GTL or LNG:Which is the best way to monetize "stranded" natural gas?

A large portion of world＇s natural gas reserves are ＂stranded＂ resources, the drive to monetize these resources leads to the development of gas-to-liquids （GTL） and liquefied natural gas （LNG） technologies. LNG has the advantage of having been developed for the past 40 years and having an excellent safety record. GTL on the other hand is another option with substantial benefits, but its development stage and commercial viability are far behind LNG. This paper presents a techno-economic comparison of GTL with LNG, including technical development, plant efficiency, market potential for the products, and capital cost for the infrastructure. The aim is to give an overall view on both LNG and GTL and provide a perspective on the profitability of these two technologies.

Economic overview of a two-agent process for underground coal gasification with Fischer-Tropsch- based poly-generation

Underground Coal Gasification(UCG)is a mining-gasification process that produces synthesis gas from in situ coal by injecting air(or oxygen and steam)and extracting the produced gas via boreholes.The resulting synthesis gas(‘syngas’)produced by UCG can be used directly as a fuel-gas or deep-cleaned to produce many other products like chemicals,liquid fuels,hydrogen and synthetic natural gas.UCG has significant environmental,safety and practical advantages over conventional coal mining and utilization,foremost being cost and emissions reductions.In South Africa,facilities of an industrial-scale Fischer-Tropsch(FT)have been operating for decades on coal-to-liquid and gas-to-liquid conversion.Oxygen-blown UCG produces syngas,which contains a mixture of carbon monoxide(CO)and hydrogen,and these molecules can be conditioned to serve as feed for synthetic-crude-oil(‘syncrude’)conversion technologies based on the FT process.African Carbon Energy(Pty)Ltd.(Africary)completed a study integrating its UCG technology with mini gas-to-liquids plant.Syngas from Africary’s Theunissen Underground Coal Gasification(TUCG)project will be used for power production and synthesis of liquid fuels in a unique poly-generation configuration.The TUCG process will consist of two parallel gasifiers,operated on different agents,making the component parts of UCG and coal-to-(any product)(CtX)tightly linked and interdependent,but reducing both cost and emissions.UCG-CtX offers a lower capital investment to conventional underground mining and surface gasification due to the removal of the surface gasifier and coal-mine operations.The gas clean-up systems will remove undesirable components from each gasifier and blend the cleaned syngas for H2:CO ratio control and provide implementation of carbon capture and sequestration.This study has minimized the complexity and optimized the process flow to provide own-use electricity and about 4000 barrels/day equivalent fuels at a capital cost estimate(2017)of about US$350 million and operating cost of around 28 US$/barrel.