Royal Dutch Shell has entered planned maintenance in February 2015 at the Pearl gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant, in Qatar.

Pearl GTL comprises two identical GTL ‘trains’, with a total capacity of 140,000 b/d of GTL products plus 120,000 b/d of natural gas liquids and ethane.

One train, representing half the facility, has recently begun a planned ‘turnaround’ maintenance programme, which will continue for a period of some two months.

The Pearl GTL project was developed in two phases.

The first phase started up in early 2011 and exported the first commercial shipment of gasoil in June 2011. The whole plant ramped up to full production at the end of 2012. The plant produces cleaner-burning diesel and aviation fuel, oils for advanced lubricants, naphtha used to make plastics and paraffin for detergents. It makes enough diesel to fill over 160,000 cars a day and enough synthetic oil each year to make lubricants for more than 225 million cars.

The products reach customers in every major energy market through Shell’s global retail network.

Source: Oil and Gas Technology