Natural Gas for Aviation Fuels

Qatar Airways has successfully tested jet fuel made from natural gas ("NG").  The jet fuel was supplied by the Qatar Petroleum ("QP") - Shell "Pearl" gas to liquids ("GTL") plant at Las Raffan Industrial City.   

QP and Shell are building the largest GTL plant in the world at Las Raffan with a capacity of about 140,000 bbl/d of GTL products and about 120,000 boe/d of petroleum condensates.

The Shell GTL process is based on Shell's new FT (Fischer Tropsch) catalyst and its proven performance at the Shell Bintulu demonstration plant in Malaysia.

Of course, aviation fuels from Shell's GTL plant require one of the most energy consuming processes and can only be commercially sustainable as long as NG feed to the plant is below world NG and LNG prices.

Exxon took a hard look at GTL in Qatar and canceled in 2007 their 154,000 bbl/d Palm GTL project in favor of the largest world scale LNG project in Qatar.

Again, we come to the point to compare Exxon and Shell strategies.  By now it should be obvious to anyone in the NG industry that GTL is uneconomical in North America - even less economical is CTL (Coal to Liquids) - and can only flourish in Qatar since QP is playing both sides, LNG and GTL and has low price NG in abundance.  The GTL play will only work if Qatar really becomes an aviation hub since in the US the Exxon Baton Rouge and Baytown integrated refineries will undercut Shell's GTL derived aviation fuel any time with their proven jet fuels.  

It becomes clear

For now GTL is an interesting process being pursued by Shell, Sasol and Lurgi with FT technology.  However, Exxon has an ace in the hole with their EMRE methanol to gasoline (jet fuel) technology.  Obviously the time is not right for Exxon to step into the GTL arena as long as their LNG investments are paying off handsomely. 

Hans Linhardt consults with leading institutions through GLG