Inside Shell's Bintulu Gas-to-Liquids Plant
Posted by Robert Rapier on November 17, 2010 - 10:19am
Bintulu. For many people involved with gasification, that word often invokes a specific image. In fact, colleagues know when I say “Bintulu” that’s shorthand for Shell’s Bintulu, Malaysia gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility (officially, the Shell Middle Distillate Synthesis plant).
I recently traveled to Malaysia on business, and I learned that I would be in Bintulu (the airport code for Bintulu, by the way, is BTU) for two days. I contacted Shell to see if they could accommodate a visit for the purpose of writing a story about their facility, and they were indeed able to get me into the plant.
Introduction
I met my hosts, Mark Pattenden (General Manager, Manufacturing), Joseph Balan (Advisor, Media Relations and Corporate Communications), and Khaty Rapaie (Communications Executive) for breakfast. I then rode to the plant with Mr. Pattenden, a transplanted Kiwi in the middle of a transfer to Houston. As we drove up to the facility, I was reminded of a fortress. There is an enormous berm out front next to the security station, and you can’t see much of what is behind it. I was later told that this wasn’t really by design; that the facility was built out of rock and that berm was just a part of the original rock.
Safety Culture
One of the things I am always interested in is a company’s safety culture. There are many hazards inherent in handling flammable or explosive materials, especially when they are subjected to high temperatures and pressures. We read of explosions, fires, and casualties every year in the oil and gas industry. You will find some companies in the news more than others, and one reason for that is that not all companies put the same real emphasis on safety.
In my experience, Shell has had a good reputation as a company that values personal safety and process safety (making sure those flammable materials stay in the pipes and tanks). But I have seen companies that applied their safety standards differently when operating in the West versus the East. So I was especially curious about this aspect.
As we entered Mr. Pattenden’s office, the first thing he did was brief us on the safety procedures in case of an emergency. Following the briefing on the response to an emergency, Mr. Pattenden added “And be sure to keep your hands on the handrails; quite a few people are hurt each year falling on stairs.” I consider myself someone who values safety at a very high level, and I could see the same sort of attitude in Mr. Pattenden.
When we sat down in the office to review the plant and its history, you could see the results of a real safety culture. Until March 2010, they had gone nearly 3 years and 5.7 million hours without a lost time injury. (Until June 2006 they had a streak of 14 million hours without a lost-time-injury). Early in my career I worked in plants where we would have a lost time injury every month or so, so this is definitely a feat worth mentioning.
History, Facts and the GTL Process
Following the safety briefing, we had a discussion about the plant’s history. Shell’s Bintulu facility is the largest GTL facility in the world[*] at 14,700 barrels of products per day, but will soon be dwarfed by their 140,000 barrel per day Pearl GTL facility in Qatar.
The plant is actually a venture composed of four shareholders: Shell (72%), Mitsubishi (14%), Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia (7%), and Sarawak State (7%).
The plant was originally completed in 1993 with a capacity of 12,500 bbl/day at a cost of $850 million. That is a capital cost of $68,000 per daily barrel, more expensive than a conventional oil refinery but far less than the costs often cited for coal-to-liquids (CTL), biomass-to-liquids (BTL), or any number of alternative fuel technologies. The plant has since expanded to the present capacity of 14,700 bbl/day and the total investment is over $1 billion.
Production was interrupted for two years starting in 1997, when particulate matter from forest fires in the area caused an explosion in the air separation unit. However, they used the downtime to also increase the plant capacity from the initial 12,500 bbl/day to the present capacity of 14,700 bbl/day. Other than this extended outage, plant reliability has been excellent. The numbers I was given for 2001 to 2009 were mostly over 98%.
Plant staff consists of 380 people, 93% of whom are Malaysian, with 80% from Sarawak state. The plant consists of a number of separate units, including units for air separation (to provide oxygen for the gasifier), the gasification unit (I explain gasification in some detail here, and describe the different versions of distillate substitutes here), a synthesis unit where the Fischer-Tropsch reaction takes place, a separation unit where the products of the FT reaction are separated, and a conversion unit. The plant also makes hydrogen for use in the hydrocracking reaction (to break the long-chain waxes into shorter hydrocarbons) and has a wastewater treatment facility that produces water that I was told was clean enough to drink. Primary products of the reaction include chemicals, waxes, naphtha, kerosene, and gasoil.
Efficiency, Product Distribution, Future Plans and Scalability
Plant efficiency has improved over time. In 2001, the facility needed just over 106 million BTUs (MMBTU) of natural gas to produce a metric ton of product, and by 2004 that had fallen to 92 million BTUs. According to my calculations, that means that in 2001 39% of the BTUs in the natural gas ended up in the product, and by 2004 that percentage was up to 45%. I was told that design changes to the upcoming Pearl facility would increase the efficiency of production even further.
The site itself is 100% devoted to the GTL process. Shell sells their GTL products to 46 different countries, but most of the deliveries are within Asia. Perhaps surprisingly, only 40% of the products are fuels; the other 60% are specialty chemicals and waxes. GTL products have certain advantages over the same products made from petrochemical feedstocks; namely that there is virtually no sulfur or aromatics in the product. This results in a colorless, odorless, and clean-burning product. (I have actually seen people drink fuel produced by a GTL process to show that it is non-toxic, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it).
Some of the product from the Bintulu plant is shipped to Europe and Thailand and is used to produce Shell’s V-Power Diesel. Their waxes are sold for use in a wide variety of products, from hot melt adhesives, printing inks, and matchsticks to crayons and candles.
I asked about the scalability of the technology, and was told that the main limitation is the physical size of the reactors and being able to transport them. Their biggest challenges, I was told, were: (1) maintaining the focus on personal and process safety; and (2) competition for talent. The plant is presently undergoing an $85 million project that will double the overall solid wax production from the plant while leaving the overall gas throughput the same. The profitability of the plant has been good; due to the unique properties of GTL liquids and waxes, they do command premium pricing.
After the discussion in Mr. Pattenden’s office, we took a drive around the plant. As soon as we all were in the vehicle, Mr. Pattenden checked to make sure we were all buckled up. Other than moss growing on some pipes (someone joked that if you leave your car parked for a week in one location, it will grow moss in that climate), the plant was very clean. There was a lot of construction activity going on around the new wax plant. I was looking for safety hazards as we drove around, but I didn’t see anything obvious. As we traveled around the facility, I saw familiar slogans about safety. I asked about their emergency response; whether they had to call the local fire department in case of a fire. They indicated that they have very sophisticated emergency response capabilities. They even have their own fire training ground for the emergency response team.
Back in Mr. Pattenden’s office, we finished up with a few questions. One of the things I asked was why the plant hadn’t been expanded more, given the obvious profitability. I was told that the company was expanding GTL, but in Qatar. However, there was also mention that they design equipment to last for 20 years, so perhaps there is uncertainty about gas supplies or prices that far out.
Conclusion
When people ask me about alternative fuels, I often steer them toward gasification as a possible solution in certain situations. For years, I have pointed to Shell’s GTL plant in Bintulu and Sasol’s CTL facilities in South Africa as examples of the scalability and workability of the technology. There are many technologies out there that are speculative; i.e., they have worked at small scale in the lab, and people envision scaling them up to thousands of barrels per day. But gasification has already demonstrated that it can operate at those scales. For this reason, I expect gasification to assume an important role in mitigating declining oil supplies.
In fact, I think that role that many envision for cellulosic ethanol — supplying a respectable amount of fuel from biomass — can actually be filled by gasification followed by the Fischer Tropsch reaction. It was a pleasure for me to finally see firsthand this example I have used so often, and I want to extend my thanks to Shell for allowing me to visit.
—-
*A representative from PetroSA in South Africa has since contacted me and offered up the following clarifications:
The PetroSA GTL plant in Mossel Bay, South Africa; previously called Mossgas was the first commercial GTL plant commissioned in the world (1992) and was the largest until the Oryx plant in Qatar was commissioned in 2007. The PetroSA GTL capacity is 22,000 bbl/day from Gas and produces another 14,000 bbl/day from associated condensate.
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A monument to human cleverness & ingenuity. A model of industrial efficiency. -- But about as fragile and resilient to the coming troubles as a 30'-high house of cards.
With the efficiencies described above what is the EROEI of the product the facility produces?
I am sure that with the effort needed to get the gas out of the ground, transport it to the plant, wave the magic wand to change it to a liquid, store it, move it again, etc., that the EROEI is quite low.
Would it be less than 1:1 like ethanal or 10:1 like much of the oil we use these days?
EROEI of natural gas itself is quite high. But then in the conversion of the process you consume about half the BTUs. So depending on how much the waste heat of the process is utilized, EROEI is going be in the range of 2 to 4 (my best guess; based on Total Usable BTUs out/BTUs consumed and lost to waste heat). But they could get away with an EROEI of 2 from an economic point of view as long as their inputs are natural gas and the outputs are much higher value products.
If you are only looking at external inputs, then the EROEI would be very high. That is how sugarcane ethanol is measured at 8 to 1; they are only looking at external inputs and not including the BTU value of the bagasse as input.
Just an FYI about the FT reaction. It is extremely exothermic. For reactors that are operated as liquid slurry, a cooling method must be used to control the reactor temperature. This energy can be captured in the plant for steam or electrical generation. I do not know what they actually do, but just something to think about.
This type of facilities should, in other words, be built in northern countries. Most towns in Sweden have some sort of central heat plant, where some fuel is burnt, typically wood chips or household trash. The heat is then transported in the form of hot water through pipes into domestic houses. I live in a flat with electric heating, but my mothers house gets all heat from such central heating facilities. Now they are also strating to build central cooling, taking advantage of the coldness stored at the bottom of our lakes.
If we built such an FT plant in for example Sweden, we could use 100% of the energy content of the fuel. NO waste.
Not exactly where I was going with this. The excess heat from the reaction would likely be integrated into plant operation which would improve the plant's overall efficiency. Also, you can't 100% energy content from anything due to thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics only say that all energy in the end turn into heat. The last step of the ladder is low value infrared radiation beaming through space, boldly going where no man has gone before.
Now, if what you want actually is heat, then this is no problem. Sooner or later the heat has to leave the plant. Why not send it out into a centralized heating grid?
In the Seattle airport; wrote a bunch of responses on the plane. Hopefully these haven't all become redundant while I was flying.
This energy can be captured in the plant for steam or electrical generation. I do not know what they actually do, but just something to think about.
Oh, they do. I think anyone doing any of the XTL plants will produce steam for power from cooling the reactor products. Shell did, and when I was with ConocoPhillips that was how our reactors were designed.
If the FT reaction is so lossy, we should probably look at more efficient products. Is there less energy lost in the generation of methanol than alkanes?
This one is not easy to answer. I need to look at it. My gut feel is that on a thermodynamic basis methanol might be worse but on an economic bais it might win. It all hinges on the syngas cost and rario of H2 and CO. I need a bit of time but someone might beat me to the post.
The numbers I got from the Green Freedom proposal (nuclear to methanol, methanol to gasoline) came to 114 TJ/day methanol (HHV) into 94 TJ/day gasoline (LHV). That appears to make methanol substantially less lossy than gasoline, though of course the devil is in the process details.
You hit the nail on the head. The EROEI looks a bit more than iffy. I do not see this as a solution. We have looked at this option. With biomass the costs skyrockets out of sight. Shell are building new plant in Qatar - the Pearl project. It will cost in excess of $18 billion for 140 kbd. This will be the most expensive jet fuel around and will need free gas.You would be better off emissions wise by using normal jet fuel. GTL jet is about +15-20% more CO2.
Robert forgot to mention that Shell blew their first Bintulu plant off the face of the earth. The bang was so big it cleared the site. At least it saved demolition costs.
that gives part of the story:
Pearl GTL - an overview
320 kboe/d of gas resulting in:
- 140 kboe/d of gas-to-liquids products (2 trains)
- 120 kboe/d of natural gas liquids and ethane
http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell/our_strategy/major_projects...
as curious canuck also points out.
Do the maths. 60 kbd goes up in smoke which is 18% of the feed. What are you going to do with the ethane and NGL's. Turn the ethane into ethylene is the usual answer. This is not an efficient way of making ethane and NGL's, when they can be recovered from associated gas.
A typical refinery would use much less than 10% as energy. The real high conversion refineries would use about 10%. This monster uses 18%.
If this process is so good then why are there not more. Answer- they cost too much. You have to make high value chemical products to get your money back, and that market is limited.
It is not the answer to our profligacy with fossil fuels.
but clearly " in excess of $18 billion for 140 kbd" is not an accurate metric either.
propane can be used directly as motor fuel for one thing. these high value chemical products are also feedstocks for product used in food production e.g. fertilizer.
i am not claiming this is good or bad. due to the shear volume of ng resources in the gulf region(qatar,iran,uae,ksa,kuwait,iraq,etal)ng and ng products are an important part of your future, like it or not.
You need a lesson with transport fuels. I have never seen propane used as a stand alone tranport fuel. You could not blend it into gasoline for vapour pressure reasons. Maybe as Autogas LPG but then it would be cut with butane. What is the point of synthesising propane and butane from methane?
You need to look at fertilizer production. Ammonia is synthesised from methane by steam reforming. Producing propane from methane and turning it into ammonia would be an act of madness.
You are right that NGL's are important feedstock, but not from methane.
High value chemical products are the waxes and higher linear paraffins not NGL's which are relatively cheap.
http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/SecInfo/PropaneS.pdf
here is a better one:
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/transportation/afvs/lpg_propane.html
never seen propane used as a stand alone transport fuel ?
what country are you from ?
i don't think there is a point of synthesising propane and butane from methane. propane and butane are naturally occuring component of natural gas. methane being the primary component, but also containing butane, propane, pentane, and hexane to name a few, all part of that 120kbpd of ngl's(no synthesis required).
I stand by my comments with good reason and for the benefit of others I will provide some more detail.
never seen propane used as a stand alone transport fuel ?
what country are you from ?
Firstly, the web site that you refer states that four million vehicles
use propane around the world. I do not argue against that but out of a global vehicle fleet in excess of 700 million http://www.rqriley.com/sld002.htm
it is less than 0.5% of the total. Where propane is used as a transport fuel, it is in vehicles such as fork lift trucks. It is also blended in autogas LPG which a small number of vehicles are equipped to use; within Europe Aautogas demand is stagnant as diesel becomes the fuel of choice. It very much depends on where you as to the use of propane, but I would question if it were the third most popular fuel, after gasoline and diesel, even in the United States. Presumably the source you referred to included space heating in this statement. In my extensive travels in the US I have rarely seen LPG used in cars.
I have noticed that, especially within the US, that there is a misconception just as to what natural gas is. There is no hard definition as such but is generally recognised as being composed mainly of methane gas- 90-95% an ethane 5-10% by wt.
Natural gas when produced comes in two forms:
Associated gas which is produced with oil and where the composition of the gases will contain methane , ethane and lesser quantities of NGL’s. For a crude oil the associated gas might make up to 30% of reservoir fluid volume. Associated gas can also be referred to as dry gas or wet gas dependent on whether condensable hydrocarbon NGL’s are still present.
Non associated gas is primarily methane and ethane with much smaller quantities of NGL’s. often less than 1 mol % total.
Most natural gases will also contain some carbon dioxide and some sulphur which are normally removed in a gas processing plant.
For reference I have used the Institute of Petroluem – Modern Petroleum Technology page 9. You mighy also like to read this.
http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/background.asp
I was unable to locate a typical gas composition for Qatar, though I think I might have something in my office. Qatar natural gas is produced from the North filed which is generally recognised as being a non associated gas field with average NGL’s for this type of gas reservoir. I took a typical wet gas and converted the mol % into wt % to make it a little easier, to understand the gas plant part of the Pearl Project:
Methane 70%
Ethane 7.5%
Propane 11%
Butanes 3.5%
Pentanes 3.7%
Hexanes 1.3%
Heptanes + 3%
Taking the Shell Pearl data of gas feed of 320 kbd boe this would give about 224 kbd boe as methane. The balance would be the ethane and NGL’s up to kerosine 96 kbd.
The difference in the mass balance between 94 kbd and 120 kbd boe for the ethane and NGl’s can be accounted for by the GTL process. The first synthesis step does actually produce up to 10% C4 and lighter and there is further generation of C3+ in the second hydrocracking step, when the waxy distillate is cracked and isomerised to jet and diesel. Data from Myers – Handbook of Petroleum Refining Processes. This gives the maximum thermodynaic efficiency of this process at about 78% based on methane.
Doing a mass balance in -out gives a difference of 224-140 84 kbd. At 78 % efficiency the plant would in theory need about 40 kbd boe leaving a further 44kbd unallocated, but around 24kbd is likely to be ethane and NGL’s produced in the process to give the 120 kbd total. Some energy will be required for the gas plant section and the hydrocracking step and it is likely that this is where the balance of the gas is consumed. I hope everyone has followed this.
The ethane gas in Qatar is destined for an olefine cracker project for ethylene production. This is very common in the ME but ethane recovery is much more difficult. Ethane cannot be separated from wet natural gas by compression; it must also be cooled.
Moving to the big question of is this a viable process? Well it works but the economics are not that great. If they were then there would be many more. The reality is that there are not many due to the extreme high capital cost, about 4X more than an oil refinery of the same capacity, and the dependency on cheap or near zero cost natural gas. Much of the natural gas in the ME is sold as low as $37 pmt $5 per boe.
It is worth mentioning that Exxon’s planned GTL project was cancelled when the construction costs started to balloon, and my guess is that the Shell Pearl plant and the Sasol Oryx plants will be the only two plants in the ME. Qatar has since scaled back much of its plans and has a moratorium on increasing gas production.
There is a good article in the oil drum from 2006 on ME gas http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/6/8/155013/7696
What is best GTL or Ammonia / Methanol. Well there are many more Ammonia and methanol plants which are considerably cheaper and easier to construct. With ammonia production for fertizer and chemical use running at 100 million tonnes per year this is more than 10X bigger than the combined GTL capacity. Methanol runs second to GTL and is multiple times greater than GTL. One point worth noting is that ammonia and methanol are commodities. Unless you have cheap gas then you will not make any money which is why many of the American and European units have closed in the past decade.
The Eni Encyclopaedia of Hydrocarbons has a good section on natural gas uses. The complete encyclopaedia is available for free download on this link:
http://www.treccani.it/Portale/sito/altre_aree/Tecnologia_e_Scienze_appl...
Using GTL for chemicals is a limited option. The high quality waxes have a limited demand and for the commodity grades these can and are extracted from waxy distillate which is s a much lower cost. I would think the planned and existing capacity for GTL would just about satisfy global demand for the speciality products..
For those wondering what I do. I work for a large petrochemical company. I specialise in oil refining and olefine cracking and I am a petroleum chemist.
you don't need to explain to me what natural gas is or where it comes from as i have spent decades in the science of natural gas and petroleum engineering.
lucky for you i have it here from:
Khuff Gas Condensate Development
http://www.onepetro.org/mslib/app/Preview.do?paperNumber=IPTC-10692-MS&s...
comp mole% (khuff 1/4)
n2 3.35
co2 1.76
h2s .53
c1 83.27
c2 5.16
c3 1.91
c4 1.08
c5 .56
c6 .39
c7+ 2.00
and your point ? it appears you hate gtl. but thank you for the references, i am always willing to learn something new.
based only on what was said in twilight, simmons missed the mark relative to ksa gas as wide as it can be missed( ~180 degrees),imo.
My my. For someone who has spent decages in gas and petroleum enginnering had you looked at the figures I quoted they were for a wet gas with a remarkably similar composition to what you have provided. All I did was convert the numbers into Wt % which makes it a little easier to follow. I gave the explanation on natural gas for others not for you.
I do not hate GTL. It is a good process but is not very economic. That means it will be a boutique process. That is all. It makes high quality products but the Eroei is a big drawback, and the complexity of the process makes the Capex not just big but colossal. That is my point.
Actually I think Simmons was right. The Saudis effort with Khuff gas have come to near zero. Why are they burning 800 kbd of crude oil for power and water generation. Answer they are short of natural gas. So a GTL project in KSA is not an option. Same for Kuwait and same for UAE. All maxed out on NG.
Have a read of the IEA OMR it gives some good insights.
the composition i referenced is for reservoir gas.
i have seen 450 boepd and have read they are planning to burn an additional 1 million bpd for power and water desal, but i have never been able to confirm that, all the references i have seen refer to boepd. boe's can be anything, although in this case, about half is ng with condensate, diesel and resid making up the bulk of the balance. if you can point me to a reliable reference that actually states bpd, not boepd, i would like to see it.
and from wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghawar_Field
what happened to ghawar oilfield, did some careless geo leave a red crayon laying on the map of ghawar to melt in the saudi sun - coloring ghawar red ? and if he/she did, they must have made the same careless mistake (careless crayon-laying about) with abqaiq and berri.
khuff is only part of the ksa story, there is also significant gas in the pre-khuff paleozoics. anyone willing to study ksa in more depth than reading 'twilight' can find out for themselves. and no matter what you or simmons or any arm chair king abdulla or anyone else said or can say about saudi arabia, they have increased gas production essentially every year since 1980.
uae is planing development of shah and bab, more khuff sour gas reservoirs. kuwait also has some sour gas reservoirs to develope(possibly in the divided zone).
these developments dont happen overnight and rome wasnt built in a day. north dome for example was discovered in the 1970's.
if you are basing your conclusions on what the eia has to say, you are walking around half blind, again imo.
you keep refering me to articles, most of which, i have already read. but maybe you are addressing everyone else, not me, in which case you should probably post a new comment.
Try the IEA June 2010
http://omrpublic.iea.org/archiveresults.asp?formsection=full+issue&formd...
page 19. This gives an insight. Believe it or not.
I do not believe anything- especially from the EIA.
Test and check and check again. This could be wrong, but it might be right.
Some believe in Simmons analysis. I think he was right. I worked in KSA and in Qatar. Did you? Probably not.
So let us agree to disagree. I hope your car goes well on propane.
also p. 15 which casts some doubt on exactly what is burned(oil or boe's).
no i have never worked in ksa. in 1981 the company i worked for was asked to do a proposal on cycling gas at n. dome. we concluded that there was not enough data to even present a decent proposal.
fair enough. i will look into fitting an lpg tank in the backseat of the geo metro.
but first, one more yabut.
yabut i dont think saudi aramco is in any hurry to develope ghawar khuff. saudi aramco has been developing sweet gas and condensate from the pre-khuff paleozoics.
khuff gas is a high yield gas/condensate. achieving a decent recovery of the condensate in place requires gas cycling. the problem being the h2s concentration, which is high and variable. i dont think it makes much sense to cycle sweet gas back into the sour khuff gas condensate reservoir. the solution some have looked at elsewhere is to cycle co2,h2s or n2.
exxon has injected h2s back into the reservoir at riley ridge and fogerty creek in wyoming. other companies are doing the same, although their motive seems to be mainly to secure a supply of co2 with about 15% methane produced with the co2 and h2s.
Try this in your quest.
http://www.saudiaramco.com/AnnualReview/index.html
Page 70 and 71.
Here you can sse the published Aramco production, exports and refining stats for 2009.
There is a diffence of 828 million barrels between production and exports, suggesting that this is the quanity consumed internally. The refining demand is 496 million barrels which leaves 332 million barrels unaccounted for. This is a start.
You also need to take into account that Ras Tanura is a big refinery but half its crude distillation capacity is a large condensate splitter. I would not expect that this was part of the crude quantity because Aramco list the condensate separately. Most of this condensate appears to have stayed in KSA. I know that some of it is used in olefines production, as well as the SCP plant, in Jubail.
Further evidence on the gas shortage comes from the Saudi Kayan Petchem project. Much of the process heat energy will be provided by direct crude burning. Another project that I was involved in was much the same. Natural gas was virtually unavailable for the foreseeable future. Many petchem projects have been dropped due to the shortage of methane. You would have to have a vey special project to get a methane allocation.
You would not be allowed to build any new petchem project based on methane in SA, and ethane is also not available for new projects. Much the same is happening with NGL,s. New petchem projects coming on stream in the next few years will consume most of the propane and butane that is left; I have a graph somwhere to prove this point which came from Aramco. As you can see most of the condensate is already consumed. The bad news is that the new oil fields (Manifa)are heavy oil with much less gas. The rise in NGL's from 2008 -2009 was due to the AFK fields and the new gas plant.
The hunt for Khuff gas, and others, continues but it looks increasingly that Matt Simmons was right.
I hope that this helps.
thanks for the link to saudi aramco's annual review. it will take me a while to read through it.
yet dry gas production(=consumption) has increased from 4.5 bcfd in 99 to 7.9 bcfd in '08, a 75% increase(eia data). i just dont see that as confirmation of simmons claims. what, are you expecting, a 100,200 or 300% increase ?
saudi arabia's demand for ng seems insatiable. that says nothing about what their reserves or resources might be. you mention petchem and that is i think the crux of the matter. i dont think export via pipeline or lng is a real option, so ksa has elected to export ng as petrochem products, fertilizer and methanol. saudi arabia claims to be the largest exporter of both dap and methanol.
surely demonstrating that saudi aramco has reserves available waiting for processing capacity. they are working on that. they keep postponing the wasit gas project because they want to contain costs, afaict.
the overall resource in ghawar, abqaiq and berri khuff is probably well known. khuff gas exploitation is apparently directed to the leaner gas condensate reservoir. ghawar khuff gas has been in production since about 1980 from the drier-leaner part of ghawar khuff.
the problem is, imo, as i detailed above:now that they have found it, what are they going to do with it(condensate rich sour gas) ? you do understand, dont you, the need to deplete a rich gas condensate at high pressure, i.e cycling ?
sorry but if your analysis of saudi arabia is strained through the 'they are lying' and 'simmons says' filters, i dont think you can begin to understand what is going on with gas in saudi arabia. 'twilight' is so full of errors, misinterpretations and misrepresentations that i asked the librarian why it wasn't filed under fiction.
it is a complex problem. i get ill to my stomach when some arm chair king abdulla says simplistically 'if they have so much gas, why are they burning oil for electric generation'.
Energy profile of Saudi Arabia
Isn't a big part of the problem for NG production in KSA the very low price caps, intended to help domestic industry?
i think so. they are also providing a subsidy to the public by burning oil in their power and desal plants. the world bank or some such organization, i cant remember which, has pushed saudi arabia to privatize their power industry. that initiative is making slow progress at best.
i ran across one publication that states that at least one of their hugh petrochem plants was owned 25% by 'the saudi public', whatever that means. in that case the sale of gas at below market value is a subsidy to 'the saudi public'.
on the other hand, saudi armco has made a pretty tough deal with lukoil, eni, sinopec and shell on their exploration ventures. gas sales at the controlled price with condensate at world market rates. i think saudi aramco is trying to get these international companies to do some heavy lifting on exploration.
I think we have gone a little off topic and run the risk of abusing TOD.
Why don't ypu put your thoughts into anew topic and see if TOD will publish it. I am no expert on Saudi Gas by any means, but my hunch is that the reservoir quality is just not that good in the Saadi sector.
You are right that the Khuff gas under Ghawar has been produced for years but it it not that significant compared with the associated gas. I wonder why.
I fully understand the need for cycling gas in a wet gas rservoir to maximise condensate recovery. I have no idea if the Saudis are doing it, but I would expect that they are.
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$18B for 140kbd is $129k per bpd. If we assume a 20 year life, and 7% interest, that's about $33 per barrel for capital costs. That seems pretty competitive with $80 crude oil, especially when you can get some revenue from the NGLs and ethane.
Robert forgot to mention that Shell blew their first Bintulu plant off the face of the earth. The bang was so big it cleared the site. At least it saved demolition costs.
But I did mention it. From the article: Production was interrupted for two years starting in 1997, when particulate matter from forest fires in the area caused an explosion in the air separation unit.
Slap on wrist accepted. I did not make the connection. You were being diplomatic. I told how it was.
Thank you Robert!
Those of us with no direct connection to the fossil fuels industry benefit tremendously from this type of insider's perspective.
Jon
Both gas to liquids and coal to gas may mitigate declining oil production. Any idea of the cost per gallon - at today's coal and ng prices? Of course, if these became widely used coal and ng prices would jump. Ten years from now, what might be the cost per gallon of these liquid fuels? This might set a ceiling as to how high oil prices could go, and as tohow much damage to the World's economy.
Any idea of the cost per gallon - at today's coal and ng prices?.
I have some idea, but they were pretty tight-lipped about costs. My best guess is that at natural gas where it is, the price per barrel is in the $60-$80 range. It will be somewhat higher for coal, I think, because even though you can often get coal at a cheaper per BTU cost than natural gas, it is a more complicated process because solids are more difficult to deal with than gases.
Thanks, RR, interesting stuff.
Could you expand on their output? What is the 14,700 bpd? Is it the aggrgate tonnage of products, or more specific to fuels? Can they easily shift their product mix from "chemicals" to kerosene? And while I'm at it..do they capture and use impurities in the NG such as helium or sulfur?
thanks
-dr
Could you expand on their output? What is the 14,700 bpd? Is it the aggrgate tonnage of products, or more specific to fuels? Can they easily shift their product mix from "chemicals" to kerosene? And while I'm at it..do they capture and use impurities in the NG such as helium or sulfur?
I believe the 14,700 bpd is barrels of oil equivalent. So the waxes and chemicals are converted to an energy equivalent to oil. They can shift their produce mix to kerosene by cracking more of the wax, but right now the money appears to be in the wax so they are expanding that part of the plant. I don’t think there is enough helium in the gas to amount to anything, but I know that many refineries capture and sell sulfur contained in both oil and natural gas.
It is not GTL, but "GTP" - gas to petrochemicals. Ethane, Propane, Butane and isobutane are not exactly oil substitues, so once you start increasing the chain length, might as well go past 7-9 carbons for gasoline and do something more productive, expensive and in some sense more needed, and having more added value for Shell. At the same time it frees equivalent portion of oil to be used for transportation. Logical and better than compressing gas and burning it somewhere else.
"Perhaps surprisingly, only 40% of the products are fuels; the other 60% are specialty chemicals and waxes."
Yes, depending on the prices of the various products produced this sounds like a petrochemical plant, not a GTL plant.
OK, it's a 5,880 kb/d GTL plant with some petros on the side then.
The Wiki article on GTL links to a World Bank doc about flared gas, GTL being one solution to that problem; I wonder what the m3 to bbl ratio is, and how much gas a massive GTL scaling up would gobble down.
The main problem with the waste inherent in flare gas is how to get it to the network. Often the gas deposit sits there some place in to small volumes to justify building a pipeline from source to any place it can be used, either a GTL-plant or the gas pipeline network, or a fertilizer plant or whatever. You invent a cheap way to transport small amounts of n-gas, and we will increase the gas reserves a good deal.
How about gigantic balloons full of the stuff, attached to solar powered drone aircraft flying at low altitudes?
T - In case you were serious: the primary problem with transporting NG is a gaseous state is that it has so little value per unit volume. Today the value of NG that would fill a 10' x 10' x 10' room is about $3. So matter how cheap your transport method might be it just won't produce a profit. Increasing the pressure of the container helps a good bit but as long as the NG is still in a gaseous state it represents just to large a space to transport any distance. That's why LNG can work: liquified NG takes much less volume to ship.
huh ? i think you meant to say 'as long the gaseous state ng is at atmospheric pressure ?
elwood - Kinda...in a gaseous state regardless of the pressure. You can pack a lot more NG into a space at 400 psi. But it still takes a lot of space as you know.
I did stumble on a potential solution years ago looking at small volume stranded NG in KY. A company made small skid mounted NG fired generators. Hook into a local power grid and you might make a profit. The problem was I could never get the acquistion cost of the equipment low enough to make it work from an investment stand point. Maybe if they start taxing flared NG based upon it's damage to the environment the economics might work out.
Rockman- Thanks for the explanation. Everything seems to have a degree of waste involved. In the NW we have portable sawmills and portable rock crushers. Does their exist portable nat gas compressors, or fertilizer plants or is the expense of such equipment not viable as an enterprise?
D - see my note above to elwood. On a small scale some things can be done. I knew an oil operator in KY who took NG off his oil wells that would have been flared and used them to fire drying kilns for hardwoods. He just built the kilns next to his wells and then moved them when needed. Even better: instead of paying for damages to trees when he cleared a drill site he bought the trees and hand them milled and then dried in his kilns as well as drying for other folks. Made a dang good profit but obvious not easy to scale up. You might poke around at those options and come up with a small scale leverage for yourself.
Rockman: I've worked out how. Construct your own heavy-lift airship(s), eg. 500 to 1000 net tons lift, lofted by hydrogen, engines fueled by hydrogen. Get Praxair etc. to manufacture self-contained skid-mount Nat Gas --> Hydrogen --> liquid Hydrogen plants in units weighing < 500 tons. (They were very interested last I spoke to them). Make contracts in N. Canada, Alaska, N. Africa, offshore etc. for nearly-free stranded gas.
Airship drops production skids and cryo tanks next to wells. Then shuttles full tanks to nearest hydro-cracking refineries, ammonia plants etc. and "nearly" empty tanks back. Airship is lofted and fueled by boil-off-gas from tanks.
Key is design of airship, which I have. lengould (AT) sympatico.ca
I'm dreaming of an airship revolution once the aviation industry start seeing the downhill of the Hubberts curve. I don't know if your idea would work, but I sure do want it to. Could be the begining of something great.
It will happen. The only reason airships are not used everywhere now is that they are too difficult to re-ballast when they drop their cargo's. Take any current-design cargo lighter-than-air-ship out into the wilderness and drop off it's cargo too quickly and it will bob up into the stratosphere like a cork. Very costly to modify the buoyancy of present designs. Modern structural fibers (carbon fiber composites) can fix that. Still not cheap for the first unit due to development of all the manufacturing facilities, but do-able. Once done, it will completely take over jobs like delivering drilling rigs to remote sites, supplying remote northern mining sites, selective logging, military heavy lift, delivering heavy/oversize equipment such as turbine generators, refinery vessels, etc. etc.
lenny - Interesting. Some years ago there were often stories about giants airships coming back into commercial play. There are actually some other oil field appliations that could come into play. But for whatever reason I hven't heard anything about them for way while. There are a number of small niche plays in the oil patch. But they tend to make money only for the low overhead sweat equity players.
The biggest problem with your plan, as best as I can tell, is a big capex partners as nutty as you. And I do say nutty with all due affection. I've seen nutty work well more than once in the oil patch.
Sounds to me like you've got too much hardware involved with making hydrogen.
Thought about carrying LNG and using methane for lift? Use waste heat from the engines to reduce the density and increase the lift further (if you can maintain 200°C at 10°C ambient you reduce the effective molecular weight to about 9.6). You get to the destination and offload excess lifting gas as well as liquid cargo.
Methane's too heavy, either as fuel or liftgas. As fuel, it needs almost the same (complexity mass) of tankage as hydrogen, and is considerably more massy per unit energy. eg LHV Hydrogen 121 MJ/kg, methane 50 MJ/kg.
Of course the energy content per unit volume of liquid hydrogen is worse than liquid methane, by a factor of nearly three, so the cryogenic tank sizes (and weights) would increase.
liquid hydrogen 70.8 kg/m3 so 1 m3 carries 8,567 MJ
liquid methane 422.8 kg/m3 so 1 m3 carries 21,140 MJ
The key issue is makling the airship large enough to benefit from the efficiencies gained in ratio of cryogenic tankage versus content as sizes increase.
Not sure about that.
At the destination end, there are already large distribution systems for natural gas. Hydrogen is a bit of a specialty fuel. And isn't the point of a cargo airship to be able to move heavy loads long distances on little fuel?
One thing strikes me: the airship only makes sense for land-locked supplies far from pipelines. An LNG airship can offload at the nearest port which can dock LNG tankers... or even load directly to an LNG tanker offshore, no port required. Air-to-surface lightering!
Yup, no matter what bulk commodity you're carrying.
Would it be worth building LNG tankers with onboard liquefiers? Or does the gas need to be pre-liquefied to keep filling time short enough?
dw - Not my area but I think a commercial sized LNG facility is much too large to place on a tanker. The ones I've seen cover many acres.
Think about it a little. Putting an LNG train on a vessel would work if the vessel was a permanent fixture i.e. moored over a stranded gas field. This is already being done. In this way the facility can be moved when the reservoir is depleted. But putting it on a vessel which would then move to a discharge facility would not be economic. The LNG train would only be used for a short time and then spend the rest of its time idle. Moreover once you have started the beast you want to keep it running, preferably maxed out. Otherwise the accountants will have your cajones.
The main problem with the waste inherent in flare gas is how to get it to the network.
This is an important comment, because it gets into the nitty-gritty of why you would do GTL. Yes, it could possibly take some of the sting out of declining oil supplies, but right now the appeal is monetizing stranded natural gas. There are places in the world where there are vast amounts of natural gas that don’t have an easy access to markets. Turning it into liquid fuels allows for a more cost effective transport to market.
The general convention is that 5800 SCf is one BOE. 5800 SCF is about 5800/35.31 m3 or about 164.26 m3.
The Pearl GTL would consume about 1.85 billion SCF/day or 52.3 million m3 per day gas (as wet gas). See my earlier post. Pearl is about as big as they get at 19 BCM per year.
RR- Thanks again for a good article.
The amount of trees consumed in wildfires each year in the western US, has me questioning bio-fuels from forest thinning. Conversion to wood pellet fuel to run gasifiers, I suppose would be another option.
You mention briefly the low grade heat produced. This kind of heat would be useful in heating homes, businesses, schools and factories, but is virtually impossible to move economically from such a plant to places of use/need.
Can you envision small CHP. Is there a point of economy of scale?
D
Can you envision small CHP. Is there a point of economy of scale?
I presume you meant small GTL. The economics become more and more difficult as the scale shrinks. This is why you don’t see a lot of small GTL plants. The technology is there, but there is a fair deal of complexity that goes into these plants, and you need scale to pay for that capital.
Sorry yes GTL. Kinda figured if there was some money in it some one would be doing it.
If you ever need someone to ride along and ask dumb questions.......
Maybe supercritical water hydrolysis?
Longer processing appears to be able to convert all glucose (and presumably all hexoses and pentoses) to liquids and gases. Technology Review covers a startup converting unspecified fermentation byproducts to bio-propane.
It appears that supercritical water oxidation can convert glucose and sewage sludge to gas very effectively. The mole-fraction of gases in Table 4 looks at first blush to be suitable for methanol synthesis after some extraction of CO2 to achieve the correct C/H ratio. You'd have to be close to a pipeline to make use of the methane and ethane, unfortunately.
Malaysia, a small country, has 8th or 14th largest natural gas reserves in the world, depending on source. Their problem is how to get the most export value from a very abundant resource. In the US, we have markets for all of our production. I think we are still a net importer. I would question whether the resource costs would allow a profit from such a plant in the US or Canada.
Definitely not viable in N. America at those capital costs (as long as oil sands production is still allowed), since the capital-$-per-bbl production is about double that of oil sands, which for the present is a practically unlimited resource limited only by capital and construction labour.
And it's only coincidental that R^2 is visiting a palm oil plantation and GTL plant?
Unfortunately, these palm oil plants produce very little biomass waste
for Fischer Tropsch BTL. 10 tons of biomass per hectare versus 3 tons per hectare of oil. It's better used as the waste for active carbon and other products.
Also the Malaysian government is already concerned about CO2 emissions from regular palm oil production.
13% of the forest land bank area has been converted to oil palm plantations.
http://www.americanpalmoil.com/pdf/enviromental/Sustainbility%20PO%20Pra...
And it's only coincidental that R^2 is visiting a palm oil plantation and GTL plant?
Could you be more vague? What is it that you are insinuating?
As far as the biomass, empty fruit bunch from the palm oil operations is a big problem. That is a lot of waste biomass that doesn’t have a good home. Like bagasse, it ends up at the plant, but it isn’t as easily handled as bagasse.
I was suprised to learn that 60% of their product was specialty waxes & chemicals. Would widespread adoption of GTL negatively impact their economics by increasing the supply of these specialty products?
Their safety record is really impressive. 5.7 million manhours without an accident is better than good.
The safety record for the Ogoni people with Shell ain't so pretty ...
http://www.smh.com.au/world/revealed-shells-pr-tricks-in-nigeria-2010111...
and ...
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/OgoniFactS.html
The safety record for the Ogoni people with Shell ain't so pretty ...
Yeah, but this story wasn’t about Shell in Nigeria, nor the history of Shell as a company. It was specifically about their Malaysian GTL operations. That does have an outstanding safety record. I can tell you that within the oil industry, Shell does have a reputation as a safe operator.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t have accidents, and that doesn’t mean they don’t have issues. I am well aware of allegations and incidents in Nigeria. And as I said to someone else, I actually mentioned that while I was down there. I said that Shell really has two things that hurt their reputation: Operations in Nigeria, and the fact that they had to restate their reserves a few years ago.
The question remains whether the things that 'hurt their reputation' are just accidents or are they symptomatic of a corporate culture that doesn't actually care that much about people in the places it operates - at least the people who have no power.
Your article was well written and insightful. Just can't rest easy over these bigger picture issues.
are they symptomatic of a corporate culture that doesn't actually care that much about people in the places it operates - at least the people who have no power.
This is one reason that I was so interested to visit; to see if their safety standards there were the same as they were in the west. Not all oil companies have a good safety reputation within the industry. Shell does have one, and what I saw in Malaysia was consistent with what I would have seen in their U.S.-operations. But the long distances between lost time injuries are really indicative of a safety culture that is engrained in that particular area.
The incident that ended their latest streak was a worker falling off his bike and breaking his wrist. Those things happen. But I didn't witness what looked to me like anything like unsafe working conditions at that specific site.
I wonder if the plant safety reflects more on the attitude of the individual plant manager and any prejudices he has against native workers than the overall company ethos?
NAOM
The thing that I would note here is that the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa would not have shown up as a 'safety incident', nor stopped plant operations in Nigeria.
The two issues are distinct and should be viewed that way: one is the safety culture, the other is (what I would consider to be) a proper valuation of and respect for the lives (and quality of life) of the locals impacted by corporate operations.
Would widespread adoption of GTL negatively impact their economics by increasing the supply of these specialty products?
We discussed that quite a bit; whether Pearl might saturate the market for some specialty products. I hope to do a story on Pearl in the not-too-distant future, and ask them about this.
Thanks for the overview Robert - as always, excellent, useful, interesting info.
I'm curious about one thing as my focus tends toward the local. That is, I'm interested in how in-place technologies will work out in a relocalized world. Where do the inputs for the plant come from? The human capital is largely local, as you note, but where do the natural gas and other inputs (resources and capital) come from? For example, in a world undergoing deindustrialization, machine parts and so forth would also need to be considered.
Edit: per sf's post above, Malaysia seems to be in good shape vis a vis local ng reserves.
If we imagine a scenario where global access to resources and capital becomes unreliable, could modifications be made to this plant (and perhaps by extension, other similar plants) such that it (they) could expect to continue to generate some level of output based on local inputs, or is it completely dependent on the existing industrial infrastructure to function and maintain?
I realize that a comprehensive answer isn't possible - I'm mostly looking for your off the cuff take.
For example, in a world undergoing deindustrialization, machine parts and so forth would also need to be considered.
This is something that is constantly on my mind. On one plant visit (not this one), someone said proudly “This really is rocket science.” My response was “Yeah, but that is a problem in my mind. We may be headed into a world without rockets.” So my tendency is to make things as rugged and simple as possible. I worry about not being able to maintain things that are overly complex.
Can someone explain which liquids are produced? Are these small chains, i.e. 2, 3, or 4 carbon or longer chains found in gasoline and diesel or jet fuel. It is basically making a wide variety of chain lengths that are being separated in a distillation column?
So at the end of the day is this a way to make plastics or liquid fuels used in transportation.
FT produces a wide variety of chain lengths. You can tune the reaction to vary the average chain length to whatever size you want, but there is always a big spread around that average.
I finally looked it up. it seems waxes (long chains) are necessary to prevent the production of methane from methane --which would be futile. So they adjust the catalyst to make longer things to produce less methane and that means they get a lot of wax.
There is an equation basically the fraction of smaller things will be greater than larger chains -- falling off in an inverse power law of some sort.
Is the cobalt or iron catalyst the better way to go?
Seems there is a trade-off in terms of metal costs.
This has been a busy post. I will try an explain for what it is worth. The FT process builds units of -CH2- and the products are linear, ie. they have no branching. There is a very good descripton of the process in Myers - Handbook of Refinery Petroleum Proceeses. The latest catalyst technology favours products in the C20+ range 60%, C12-19 range 10%, C5-12 range 20% and C4- range 10%. All approx.
Linear paraffins get waxy very quickly. FRom about C16 onwards the freeze point approaches ambient levels. This is a major issue with diesel and it waxes. To overcome this issue the second part of the Shell process combines a mild hydrocracker with the FT synthesis. The hydrocracker i contains a zeolite catalyst that promotes acid catalysed cracking and branching. Ideally the gasoline range is highly branched and the diesel range not too branched. Jet kero can handle high branching at it depresses the freeze.
From Myers after the hydrocracker the approximate yield is as follows ( this is in mol % so you have to make a correction for the MW)
C1 <0.5
C2 <0.5
C3 3
C4 10
C5 12
C6 10.5
C7 11.5
C8 11
C9 10.5
C10 10
C11 10
C12 8.5
C13 5
C14 <1
I will leave you to do the conversion to Wt %. Tip - the money ( at least for fuels) is in the C12 -C18 range jet/ diesel.
The Shell SMDS proocess uses a proprietry Co low temmp catalyst which they claim is better than Fe. I have no idea on this .
I hope this helps
Can someone explain which liquids are produced? Are these small chains, i.e. 2, 3, or 4 carbon or longer chains found in gasoline and diesel or jet fuel. It is basically making a wide variety of chain lengths that are being separated in a distillation column?
You get a range, but generally what is produced are very long chain hydrocarbons (waxes are the predominant product from most FT processes) that are then cracked back to shorter chains.
I'd guess there are problems comparing net energy per hectare between palm oil diesel and Fischer Tropsch fuel from biomass. Energy will be consumed milling cellulosic material and gasifying it. There could be more unusable leftovers from woody biomass.
Since less than 50% of the heating value of the NG is retained in the GTL fuel it would be better to run vehicles on straight natural gas, even allowing for the minor effort needed to compress it into cylinders. However liquid fuel not bulky pressure tanks will be needed in aircraft and in compact PHEVs with range extender engines. I think that is the main role of GTL, namely to keep aircraft flying and to drive our PHEVs beyond city limits.
Therefore I suggest we burn less NG in power stations as that is the job for nukes, at least for baseload power. Excuse the acronyms but we'll need NG for CNG, peaking and load balancing of wind power, making N fertiliser, process heat, CHP and GTL for aircraft and PHEVs. We should not be burning so much gas in base or intermediate load power stations. Post oil NG is the last abundant and flexible hydrocarbon.
It's such a shame that 50% of the BTU's are wasted. Some inventor has to change this. Maybe a bacteria that feeds on ng and expels oil - I'm sure I have some in my backyard.
Coal is still abundant although it's a big polluter. There is also a coal-to-liquids process. Soft coal, I believe, is less than 50% carbon so you might call it a partial hydrocarbon.
It's such a shame that 50% of the BTU's are wasted.
Not completely wasted, because the process does generate steam that can be used as both process steam and for power production.
There is also a coal-to-liquids process.
Which the Germans famously turned to in WWII, and even today supplies 40% of South Africa's liquid fuels.
Since less than 50% of the heating value of the NG is retained in the GTL fuel it would be better to run vehicles on straight natural gas, even allowing for the minor effort needed to compress it into cylinders.
Yes, if the primary purpose is vehicle fuel, far more efficient to use natural gas directly. But GTL is generally considered when the gas is remote from the markets that demand it. In that case, it can be more efficient to transport the liquid and use it than to try to transport the gas.
Thanks for the article! Very informative.
With the shale gas revolution, I suspect we'll be seeing many more of these facilities to satisfy our desire for liquid fuels.
I haven't seen this doco on "fracking" yet (it's just been released to very good reviews), but wonder if gas IS a friendly-ish way forward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8
Regards, Matt B
STILL a concerned dad!!!
yeah, great article. how does gtl compare with lng or methanol on an energy input/output basis ?
it appears the gulf region will be a supplier of all liquids for a looooooooooong time, imo.
broadly, natural gas liquids: condensate, ngl, lng, gtl and methanol is the(to overuse the already overused term) 'game changer', imo.
i wonder, though what will happen to the price of sulfur ? it may be given away in the future, which is, alledgedly, what happened to the price of sulfur in early '09 - $0/ton.
how does gtl compare with lng or methanol on an energy input/output basis ?
I think in most cases the economics come down on the side of LNG. That was our conclusion at ConocoPhillips after spending a lot of R&D money on GTL. We chose the path of LNG. But GTL can still be the right answer in the right situation.
What about CNG? I saw an article a year or two back about a ship that was carrying CNG from S. America (IIRC it was stranded gas). They said that for smaller quantities of gas (and with an innovative coiled pressure vessel) that CNG actually worked a bit better than LNG.
Does that make sense?
I think Robert answered this succintly and to the point. My view too. It is also the view of many others . Sakhlain Island could have been GTL. It was not.
“Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.” — George Carlin
Obviously we can't call international companies "American".
This sounds like a BAU type article to glorify an international company that has done incredible damage to the people of the Earth by being a prime player in global climate change / global warming.
Safety? Really, myopia is not very safe after all is said and done.
And why the angelic image generation when that is not the whole story:
(NY Times).
Just sayin' ...
I guess in in the weak government limit the multi-national corp can be the evil dictator more directly and in the strong government limit (like China) the government can be the evil dictator.
In any case, Shell is trying hard to not be thought of as like bp after the gulf spill. I am tired of hearing how great Shell is. They are all the same basically. They all had the same Gulf spill response documentation. Thus they (all giant oil companies) are the same giant corp with a bunch of somewhat independent moving arms -- an octopus like the standard oil cartoon from the history books.
http://www.onepennysheet.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Standard_oil_600...
Still after all these years, same net effect -- just multinational now, of course.
Oct, don't know if you've read it, but 'Crude World:the Violent Twilight of Oil' gives a hair and gorge raising account of the IOC's plundering and pillaging. The synopsis:
"Maass exposes the staggering destruction oil has wrought in countries less well-known as energy suppliers. The author recounts how the greed of Western oil companies, governments and consumers have propped up such vicious and corrupt dictatorships as that in Equatorial Guinea, where flights run nonstop from the destitute capital to Texas. The author's Toxic Tour of Ecuador uncovers more cause for concern, like the fact that more oil has been spilled into that country's rain forests and stretch of Amazon than were spilled by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska. Reported from countries ranging from Russia to Nigeria, Maass's heartfelt and beautifully crafted book reveals how one of oil's darkly magical properties is that it erases inconvenient memories."
http://www.amazon.com/Crude-World-Violent-Twilight-Vintage/dp/1400075459...
It's not sensationalist, and well worth reading. Although, like many such tomes, once one has this knowledge, continued support in any form for these entities acquires an ethical dimension. That is, the acquisition of knowledge sometimes yields an ethical dilemma.
"... continued support in any form for these entities acquires an ethical dimension ..."
I know it. I try to reduce oil consumption and so forth, but when you have children it is hard to do. Then you think your children are ruining other children's lives. It can be depressing.
Thanks for the book tip.
ozzy - there is no ethical dilemma IMHO. For me "dilemma" implies some significant difficulty making a choice. Maybe you've seen my post regarding my work in EG. There's no ethical problem what so ever for the US or the EU: the country is run by a homicidal dictator and ships his oil out to the higest bidder. While technically EG has one of the highest per capita incomes in the world the great majority of the citizens live in absolute poverty. No eithical problem at all: the buyers just ignore the plight of the locals with no difficulty at all. Like magic: Just look the other way and...POOF! No problem.
Oct, don't know if you've read it, but 'Crude World:the Violent Twilight of Oil' gives a hair and gorge raising account of the IOC's plundering and pillaging.
I actually reviewed that book right here on TOD:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5802
And in fact, I often recommend to people who want to understand the oil industry. I mention it frequently when I am speaking to audiences; that if they want to see the dark side of their oil consumption, read that book. All oil users are complicit.
But, again, you are criticizing the story for not addressing an issue that has nothing to do with the topic. In a story about Bintulu, Shell’s Nigerian operations have no relevance. If I was covering their Nigerian operations, then their safety record in Bintulu would have no relevance. Now if I was covering the profile of the overall company, both would have relevance.
Thanks for the link, Robert. I checked out your review, and agree with the portrait you paint of it.
Actually, if you go back and red my post (I know you're sitting in an airport trying to get off lots of responses, so no worries :), you will see that I am not criticizing anything. My post was simply a response to another's, and at no point do I bring your article into that post.
Well, I am not totally convinced. After all, since a corporation is legally a 'person' after all, then talking about the exemplary conduct of a person in one country, when you know that person was busy raping and pillaging in another a coupla years back, seems like that fact has *some* relevance. I do understand what you are saying, in the context of the purpose of the article here on Bintulu, but I think there is a larger point to be made. And in fact, that's what comments are for. ;-)
Safe travels...
And why the angelic image generation when that is not the whole story:
No time for detailed responses, but that has nothing to do with their Malaysia operations. If I was reporting on their Nigerian operations, it would have been a different story. I even mentioned that to them when I was there; that their reputation in Nigeria was not good. But this story was about my visit to their GTL facility, which is a quite impressive engineering feat.
The fact is, that for just about any story there are many facets. For Shell as a company, they are involved in things that we would characterize as good, bad, or indifferent. This story is simply on what I witnessed first hand in Malaysia, and they appear to have a solid operation there.
Fair enough Mr. Rapier.
It is just that since we have passed peak sanity, whether or not you believe we have reached peak oil, I watch things closely.
Good day sir.
It's not just sanity that has peaked - as the inimitable and clever Dmitry Orlov's latest blog makes clear, America passed peak competence some time ago:
Your (anti)left-(pro)right bias is showing. I would rather characterizes the cause as the uniquely American concept that "a trained manager can manage anything, no job-specific knowledge required". The Jack Welsh / General Electric toxic inheritance, now firmly entrenched, esp. in all the ivy-league "management" schools. I see it constantly in the software industry, where large-company projects fail miserably with depressing regularity while "project managers" who know little or nothing about what their crews are supposed to be doing relentlesly promote incompetents, fire their most productive (usually for some social faux-pas as described above), and idle along blindly right up until their project is cancelled.
Not sure if you are talking to me or Dmitry Orlov. If me, well, I've already been accused of being left-wing here on TOD, so I suppose it is pleasingly symmetrical to be accused now of being right-wing. :)
Like myself, I don't see Orlov as fitting neatly into either category. As I've said before, I think the whole left-right political axis is a fiction, at least here in America. Both 'sides,' despite the difference in rhetoric, pursue much the same policies, which al serve the same end: growing the size and scope of the State and its power. One of my favorite tee shirts sayings:
F**k Republicans F**k Democrats - start a revolution, think for yourself
I do think the data from the research he cites is consistent with my experiences, though I wonder about the methodology and the way they chose the various population samples.
BTW, I agree with you whole-heartedly about the GE 'toxic inheritance' - I've seen it in both the software and semiconductor industries.
Along those lines, if you haven't read it yet, you may find the following book a very stimulating read:
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
How does the GTL plant compare with say a ammonia plant on profitability ?
Thanks for the article it fit some of my suspicions that petrochemicals are important enough and valuable enough to allow a wide range of plants that might not be profitable as fuel only.
And of course one can consider the waste in petrochemical products plastic bags being and easy one.
I think that as long as the technology is feasible and the demand in existence that primarily chemical plants working on a variety of feedstock are possible. Prices could go quite a bit higher and sheer waste eliminated easily.
Fuels would probably be one of the products perhaps major but perhaps not. So a fairly significant secondary fuel product industry associated with a primary chemical industry using NG,BioFuel, CTL depending on prices/demand is quite reasonable.
Perhaps at some point recycling of plastic/wax/oil wastes as feedstock will also make sense.
I can't find any stats on how much oil is used for chemical manufacture but in any case it depends on the economy.
Certainly if we need it I'm sure we could have what I would call alternative feedstock plants easily supply our chemical needs plus say the airline industry with fuel or something like that.
For the US for example in conjunction with say biodiesel and projected oil production enough to supply critical industries for decades to come.
Large amounts of fuels for discretionary transport ?
Probably not but simply enough to stay alive and live reasonably ok sure why not.
Between everything functioning as it does now and back to the stone age exists a readily doable "thrifty" world that could in my opinion exists readily with known technology.
Plastics would not be dirt cheap but they would also not be expensive. Air travel would expensive but not the domain of the rich etc etc.
Overall consider a world that uses 50% of the fossil fuels we do today with plants like this supply 30% of our product needs.
Thats entirely feasible. Things would be different sure but not exactly terrible. Heck the lower pollution leaves and return to denser living in cities under such circumstances could well result in and overall better standard of living.
More people walking riding bikes and healthier. More people becoming active in their neighborhoods. With the collapse of sprawling suburbia the country side would begin right at the city or village edge.
Sorry for the scattered post but this article confirms a lot of thoughts I've had that certain approaches where doable.
We could continue to use our remaining fossil fuel supplies in a safe, responsible and reasonable manner and readily taper out into renewables over a period of decades. If we further assume that the society would continue to transition to reuse/recycling and simply not using some products the final transition off of fossil source may well have little impact. Perhaps at some point simply efficiently using the biomass associated with needed food production could meet our needs.
And of course if your talking about a period of 30-50 years perhaps its a time span over which we could get fusion to work. Given its history giving it another 50 years is pretty reasonable. Biomass coupled with fusion is in my opinion a fairly trivial problem.
Heck C02 and H20 plus fusion works. Indeed as sort of a minimal impact footprint in the long run fusion seems to trump all other approaches. We just need the time to get there and hopefully be wise stewards of our planet by the time we achieve it.
Personally I'm glad that fusion has failed to develop commercially so far I don't think our current culture would use it wisely.
Back on that topic same for GTL. If GTL had been competitive with cheap oil all it would have done is double the damage we have done. I'm glad that its a process that not trivial to do. On the same hand its nice that its doable for a price. Despite all the mistakes we are made at least future generations do have the option of GTL if they try and change. We haven't managed to steal everything.
Anyway I'm tired and need to go to bed just wanted to comment because this is something I have a keen interest in. Good to see Roberts report as I think real alternatives and intermediate approaches are viable if we can adapt.
How does the GTL plant compare with say a ammonia plant on profitability ?
Very situation dependent. In most cases, I think the financial risk from building an ammonia plant is much lower than that for a GTL plant. But a GTL plant can be very profitable if you have a long-term situation in which the spread between natural gas and liquid fuels is very high.
All, in a plane for a good chunk of the next 24 hours. Will try to catch up on responses after that.
Wow what a monster that facility is. My first thought was "must be a pretty low EROI". lol
I think it is correct to say that processing for both GTL and CTL will release as much CO2 at the plant as will emerge from the tailpipe of the vehicle that uses the liquid fuel. If carbon tax or cap and trade ever happen these fuels will be slugged twice but the rate will depend on the amount of fossil derived CO2. This is because the Fischer Tropsch process partially burns some of the feedstock to create the necessary heat and pressure.
The CTL plant in North Dakota that sequesters process CO2 doesn't seem to be replicated elsewhere. The doubling factor comes up again since NG is more hydrogen rich than coal and generally seems to take half the amount to get the same thermal power. Suppose carbon tax on CTL without carbon capture was 20c a litre, taxed just once but attributable to 10c worth at the plant and 10c via the car tailpipe. Then we might have
- GTL: carbon tax 10c/L
- CTL with 80% CCS: carbon tax 4c/L
- biomass: 0c per L (?)
- coal/biomass feedstock blend: pro rata.
Re Pickens plan I agree we should conserve NG as a transport fuel. Less power, less range and longer filling time but still way more mobility than EVs and bicycles.
If carbon tax or cap and trade ever happen these fuels will be slugged twice but the rate will depend on the amount of fossil derived CO2.
I think as soon as it becomes obvious that we have a serious liquid fuel problem, all of those punitive CO2 schemes will go right out the window.
Sadly, I agree.
On the other hand, you agree that Climate Change really does need to be addressed, right?
On the other hand, you agree that Climate Change really does need to be addressed, right?
As I have said before, I accept the science of climate change and I think it is very dangerous to tamper with the makeup of the atmosphere. On the other hand, due to so many countries having coal and heavy oil resources, I believe these resources will be tapped when a liquid fuel crisis is upon us. Even if some countries choose not to develop them, others will. So we need to do something, but I don't think we will.
Again, sadly, I agree.
I have a bit of hope that we will do something in the medium term. The effects of climage change will become more apparent and begin to affect almost all countries. At the same time, wind, nuclear, solar, EVs and EREVs, and so on, will become cheaper and better understood.
At that point, perhaps 10 years out, I think we'll start to be more aggressive. That will be a bit late, but better late than never...
Three words: nuclear process heat.
A lot of the energy involved in things like biomass processing (like the supercritical water gasification I linked above) is process heat. Given a source of cheap, carbon-free heat in the range of 600°C or greater, biomass could be gasified and perhaps energy added from the thermal input. Of the products, only CO2 has little commercial value (and it might be e.g. pumped into oil wells in the region).
I will have to revisit the ANL paper to try to calculate the energy balance of the process; if it is endothermic, this could be very big.
Edit: The supercritical water gasification process products have roughly the same chemical energy as the inputs. This is a LOT better than pyrolysis gasification processes.