|
BP Amoco to look at both LNG and GTL projects for ANS gas
Kristen Nelson
BP Amoco’s acquisition of ARCO will increase the company’s ability to “maximize hydrocarbon recovery from all sources in Alaska,” said Richard Olver, managing director and executive vice president of BP Amoco.
The new company will have “formidable technology capabilities,” he said April 1 in Anchorage, and intends to look at both liquefied natural gas and gas to liquids as ways to commercialize North Slope gas.
Olver said BP Amoco plans “to bring together and relocate the global gas technology group in Alaska.” The company will also “stand behind ARCO’s gas sponsor group in pursuit of the LNG solution,” he said, and will also build a $70 million pilot gas-to-liquids plant on the North Slope.
Olver said pursuing both LNG and GTL strategies for Alaska North Slope gas is “not contradictory. Nobody today knows what the best way of commercializing Alaskan gas is. In that event, the best thing that any company can do is to leave no stone unturned. … we’re going to look really hard at some of our gas to liquids technology and we’re going to continue to pursue LNG.”
BP Amoco will have a much greater stake in Prudhoe Bay gas once the ARCO acquisition is complete: BP Exploration (Alaska) has a 51.2 percent ownership in the Prudhoe Bay oil rim, but only a 13.8 percent ownership in the gas cap while ARCO, with a 21.9 percent oil rim ownership, owns 42.6 percent of the gas cap. Once BP Amoco’s acquisition of ARCO is complete, BP will own 73.1 percent of the Prudhoe oil rim and 56.4 percent of the gas cap. The other large owner at Prudhoe Bay is Exxon, which has a 21.9 percent oil rim ownership (plus 1.9 percent from Mobil) and a 42.6 percent gas cap ownership (plus 0.3 percent from Mobil). Markets for both GTL and LNG, Thompson says Ken Thompson, executive vice president of Atlantic Richfield, noted that ARCO had also looked at both liquefied natural gas and gas to liquids for ANS natural gas.
“We were aggressive in terms of looking at the LNG alternative with the gas sponsor group,” Thompson said. “At the same time, we are constructing a GTL pilot plant in our Cherry Point refinery in Washington state.”
The two products, he said, have different markets: “LNG for clean natural gas to power plants in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China,” while GTL “could fit in extremely well on the West Coast” because it produces a very clean no-sulfur diesel. “So one may not exclude the other,” Thompson said. “We’ll get down to economics and what makes the most sense for BP Amoco and for the state” but the one does not exclude the other.
| 