Qatar, South Africa sign methanol agreement

Sept. 18, 2003
Qatar Petroleum Co. (QP) and PetroWorld Ltd. signed a heads-of-agreement in Doha Sunday to jointly build a 12,000-15,000 tonne/day methanol plant at Ras Laffan.

By OGJ editors

HOUSTON, Sept. 18 -- Qatar Petroleum Co. (QP) and PetroWorld Ltd. signed a heads-of-agreement in Doha Sunday to jointly build a 12,000-15,000 tonne/day methanol plant at Ras Laffan.

Qatari Energy and Industry Minister Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyah, who also is QP chairman, signed the agreement with Minister of Minerals and Energy of South Africa Phumzile Mambo-Ngcuka.

Under terms of the agreement, PetroWorld will conduct a feasibility study, to be completed by yearend, and will develop a plan for process selection and project implementation. The partners expect the proposed $1 billion plant to be on steam by 2008.

Qatar's North field will provide natural gas feedstock for the plant, which will produce fuel grade methanol for electric power generation plants in areas inaccessible to pipeline gas and LNG.

"The major factor that has limited wide-scale use of methanol as a power generation fuel has been price," said a PetroWorld spokesperson. He said that limitation would be removed due to the lower unit-cost/btu made possible by the economies of scale of this world scale methanol project. "Electric power generators require only minor modifications to their existing combined cycle combustion turbine facilities to accommodate this environmentally friendly fuel," he said.

PetroWorld Ltd. is a 50:50 joint venture of Petroleum Oil & Gas Corp. of South Africa Pty. Ltd. and Transworld Exploration Ltd., Houston, part of the Transworld group of companies.