Qatar Daily News

Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s two mammoth natural-gas projects in Qatar will increase the company’s cash flow by $4 billion a year when they start up in 2011 and give a big boost to the company’s output, said Peter Voser, Shell’s chief executive.

Speaking to reporters in London, Mr. Voser said the Pearl gas-to-liquids plant and Qatargas 4, a liquefied-natural-gas development, would deliver 350,000 barrels a day of oil—some 10% of Shell’s current output.

“These projects combined will have a substantial impact on Shell’s world-wide production [and] generate sustained positive cash flows for decades to come,” he said. Income from the Qatar ventures will underpin Shell’s next wave of new investments, he said.

Mr. Voser was speaking after Shell took analysts round Pearl and Qatargas 4, two projects that are vital to the company’s growth strategy. With a price tag of $18 billion to $19 billion, Pearl—which will convert Qatari natural gas into diesel and other high-value oil products—is the biggest single project in the global oil industry and is also the world’s largest GTL development.
Read the rest of this entry »

The project receiving Royal Dutch Shell’s largest foreign investment, the Pearl super-clean fuels plant in Qatar, is tough but on schedule, a top Shell executive said on Tuesday.

“It’s a very challenging project, but so far so good,” Linda Cook, Shell’s executive director for gas and power, told reporters on the sidelines of a conference.

Cook reiterated Shell’s guidance on the start date for the plant at the end of this decade.

Qatari officials have said the plant, which converts gas to liquid fuels, would start in late 2010.
Read the rest of this entry »

Royal Dutch Shell is making a huge — and risky — bet on technology that transforms natural gas to diesel fuel

In the search for alternatives to gasoline, Royal Dutch Shell PLC has made one of the biggest and boldest bets in the energy industry.

The Anglo-Dutch company is investing up to $18 billion in a vast plant in Qatar to transform natural gas into clean-burning synthetic diesel fuel. Due to come on line in late 2010, it is one of the world’s most ambitious industrial projects and Shell’s largest single investment.

But the development, known as Pearl GTL, involves huge risks. It’s based on a technology known as gas to liquids, or GTL, that is untested on such a massive scale. And with construction costs higher than they were when the project was announced in 2002, some Shell investors fear that Pearl could suffer the same extended delays and budget blowouts that have plagued other multibillion-dollar energy projects around the world in recent years.

Read the rest of this entry »

QATAR Airways is one step closer to becoming the world’s first airline to fly on gas-to-liquids kerosene oil as its aircraft engines will be certified for GTL use by the year-end.

Certification from the Federal Aviation Agency (US) and European authority concerned for GTL use in Qatar Airways’ aircraft engines was expected by 2009-end, the airline’s CEO Akbar al-Baker, told Gulf Times yesterday.

“We need certification from these authorities before we can start using GTL in our aircraft engines. This is because our engines are made either by American or European manufacturers,” he said.
GTL kerosene is highly environmentally-friendly and will significantly reduce carbon emissions. It is dubbed “green fuel” because of its non-polluting features.

Qatar is fast emerging as the global centre for GTL technology as it has invested billions of dollars in setting up two gas-to-liquids projects at Ras Laffan – Pearl GTL and Oryx GTL.
Read the rest of this entry »