Technip to wrap up prep of initial feasibility study for GTL plant in Uzbekistan in Jan
TASHKENT. May 17 (Interfax) - Technip will next January complete the preparation of a feasibility study of a project for the building of a plant in Uzbekistan for the production GTL synthetic liquid fuel, the senior engineer at Technip's offices in Rome, Simona Bonetti, said Wednesday at the international conference Oil and Gas of Uzbekistan.
Technip is working on Feed-2 of the initial project feasibility study, Bonetti said. Feed-1 was completed in 2010.
The Uzbekistan GTL joint venture is between Uzbekneftegaz, Sasol Synfuels International (Pty) Ltd. and Malaysia's Petronas International Corporation Ltd. The plant will run on technology from South Africa's Sasol. Design capacity is 1.4 million tonnes per year, as at the Oryx GTL plant in Qatar, which was also built with Technip's involvement. The plant will produce synthetic fuel, diesel fuel kerosene and liquefied gas. The active construction phase should begin in 2017.
Uzbekneftegaz, Sasol and Petronas signed an investment and design agreement for the GTL plant in September last year. The companies signed the founding documents for the Uzbekistan GTL joint venture in November 2009. The joint venture was initially owned on equal terms with initial equity of $30 million. However Petronas last year decided to reduce its stake in the joint venture from 33.3% to 11%, and Uzbekneftegaz and Sasol now own 44.5% each.
The pre-feasibility study put project costs at $2.739 billion.
The plant will use stripped methane from the Shurtan Gas Chemical Complex as feedstock and use gas-to-liquid (GTL) technology to refine up to 3.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year, producing 672,000 tonnes of diesel fuel, 278,000 tonnes of aviation kerosene, 361,000 tonnes of naphtha and 63,000 tonnes of liquefied gas.