GTL plant on target for April start

Allen Baker

A pilot plant in Nikiski for testing BP’s gas-to-liquids technology is on track to start converting natural gas-to-liquid fuels by April.

About 100 to 120 workers are on site, down from a peak of 220, according to Steve Fortune, the project’s engineering manager. Fortune provided an update on the project at the PacCom convention in Anchorage Feb. 20.

The $86 million plant will be used to test new technology BP has developed, including a compact reformer that’s about a fortieth the size of a conventional unit. About $40 million of the total was spent in Alaska.

Testing at Nikiski could go on as long as five years, according to Fortune.

The plant is designed so BP can plug in new designs in various stages of the process to test what its labs produce.

“We have a site devoted to research. That’s a very powerful thing to have,” he said. “If we can prove the technology at this scale, we can go up to 100-300 times the scale.”

With that, BP could build a plant on the North Slope that would produce 30,000 barrels daily, Fortune said, a hundred times what the Nikiski facility will turn out. Additional “trains” could mean even higher production from a single facility but little additional cost savings, he said.

BP has already done quite a bit of the design work for a commercial-scale plant, Fortune said.

The liquid that’s produced by a GTL plant is low in sulfur and other pollutants, and is expected to command a premium in the market.

Editor’s note: See full story in the March 3 edition of Petroleum News Alaska.