Gas To Liquids - Commercial Uses

Commercial Uses

Two companies, SASOL and Royal Dutch Shell, have technology proven to work on a commercial scale. PetroSA completed semi-commercial demonstrations of gas-to-liquids used by the company in 2011. Using gas-to-liquids processes, refineries can convert some of their gaseous waste products (flare gas) into valuable fuel oils, which can be sold as is or blended only with diesel fuel. It may also be used for the economic extraction of gas deposits in locations where it is not economical to build a pipeline. This process will be increasingly significant as crude oil resources are depleted. Royal Dutch Shell produces a diesel from natural gas in a factory in Bintulu, Malaysia. Another Shell GTL facility is the Pearl GTL plant in Qatar, the world's largest GTL facility and there are reports that Shell is looking at the feasibility of a GTL facility in Louisiana, US. SASOL has recently built 34kb/d Oryx GTL facility in Ras Laffan Industrial City, Qatar.

On 1 February 2008, an Airbus A380 flew a three-hour test flight between Britain and France, with one of the A380's four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines using a mix of 60% standard jet kerosene and 40% gas to liquids fuel supplied by Shell. The aircraft engine needed no modification to use the GTL fuel, which was designed to be mixed with normal jet fuel. Sebastien Remy, head of Airbus SAS's alternative fuel programme, said the GTL used was no cleaner in CO₂ terms than standard fuel but it had local air quality benefits because the GTL portion contains no sulphur. On 12 October 2009, a Qatar Airways Airbus A340-600 conducted the world's first commercial passenger flight using a mixture of kerosene and synthetic GTL fuel in its flight from London's Gatwick Airport to Doha.

One other proposed solution is to use a novel FPSO for offshore conversion of gas to liquids (methanol, diesel, petrol, syn-crude, and naphtha).

Brazilian oil company Petrobras has ordered two small experimental GTL production facilities intended to be posted at offshore oil fields too distant or deep to justify gas pipelines to onshore GTL plant. In January 2012 Petrobras' Cenpes Research and Development Centre approved for commercial deployment the technology supplied by UK-based gas-to-liquids company CompactGTL.

The World Bank estimates that over 150 billion cubic metres of natural gas are flared or vented annually, an amount worth approximately 30.6 billion dollars, equivalent to 25 percent of the United States’ gas consumption or 30% of the European Union’s gas consumption per year, a resource that could be useful using GTL.