Emir of Qatar inaugurates Pearl GTL Project

The Emir of Qatar formally inaugurated the Pearl Gas to Liquids (GTL) Project, the largest GTL plant in the world, today. The project has been jointly developed by Qatar Petroleum and Shell. Pearl GTL turns natural gas into high quality liquid fuels and products using innovative technology and engineering.

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), and will 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.

Major construction of the project was completed by the end of 2010, and the second train of the plant started up in November 2011. 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.