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Syntroleum to conduct preliminary investigation of GTL industry for Russia
Petroleum News Anchorage Staff
Tulsa, Okla.-based Syntroleum Corp. signed a contract March 26 to do a preliminary investment analysis to support efforts by OAO Gazprom to build a gas-to-liquids industry in Russia.
Gazprom is the world's largest gas company, Syntroleum said March 27. The contract is with Gazprom's research and development affiliate, the Scientific and Research Institute of Natural Gas and Gas Technologies in Moscow.
The study includes 12 specific locations in the Russian Federation selected by Gazprom as potential sites for GTL units using Syntroleum's GTL technology. The locations gas feedstock from four sources: stranded, underutilized associated gas; natural gas from remote discovered, but undeveloped large gas fields; pipeline quality gas from Gazprom-operated transmission lines in proximity to centers for export and/or consumption; and gas well gas from fields with flowing pressures too low to be economic when compressing to normal transmission line operating pressures. Gas supplies would be dedicated Syntroleum said the natural gas supplies are owned or controlled by Gazprom and could be dedicated to GTL plants under long-term contracts.
The analysis will consider three types of clean hydrocarbon liquid products: synthetic liquid fuels such as low viscosity Arctic-grade diesel and other fuels meeting Russian standards; petrochemical feedstock; and specialty products such as lubricants.
Syntroleum said plant sizes could range from input rates of 1 billion cubic meters per year to 10 billion cubic meters per year.
The first deliverable under the agreement will be an investment memorandum suitable for presenting to financing institutions. Twenty percent of world's proved gas Syntroleum said Gazprom holds 20 percent of the world's proved gas reserves and in presentations in Houston during the October 2002 U.S.-Russia Commercial Energy Summit, Gazprom indicated that it intends to become even more of an international energy concern in the coming years and that GTL, along with independent power and petrochemical projects, are a natural fit for this strategy.
Jack Holmes, Syntroleum president and chief operating officer, said Gazprom began assessing Syntroleum's GTL technology more than a year ago. Syntroleum is the developer and licensor of proprietary GTL technology for converting natural gas into synthetic liquid hydrocarbons.
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