The world’s largest gas-to-liquids (GTL) was officially inaugurated by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar on Nov. 22. Pearl GTL was jointly developed by Qatar Petroleum and Shell.

When fully operational, Pearl GTL will have the capacity to produce 140,000 barrels per day (b/d) of high quality GTL products (gasoil, naphtha, kerosene, normal-paraffin and lubricant base oils). It will also produce 120,000 b/d of natural gas liquids (liquid petroleum gas and ethane) and condensate.

Pearl GTL is a fully integrated upstream/downstream, world-scale project 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 worldwide distribution of these products in one project.

The facility is being developed in two trains and major construction was completed at the end of 2010. The first train started up in the first quarter 2011 and the first commercial shipment of gasoil was exported in June. The second train of the plant started up in November by bringing in sour gas from offshore wells. The gas processing plant has come quickly on line delivering on-spec gas, condensate, LPG and sulfur. The first of the four world-scale air-separation units in Train 2 is also on-line producing on-spec oxygen.