Qatar Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell PLC have canceled plans to proceed with development of the proposed Al Karaana petrochemicals complex in Ras Laffan Industrial City, north of Qatar (OGJ Online, Dec. 5, 2011).
The companies made the decision to scrap the project after bids submitted by potential engineering, procurement, and construction firms showed capital costs for the development would be too high and commercially unfeasible given the energy industry’s currently weak economic climate, Shell said.
Initiated with a heads of agreement between QP and Shell in late 2011 following the conclusion of a joint feasibility study by the two companies, the project was to include:
• A steam cracker, with feedstock from natural gas projects in Qatar.
• A monoethylene glycol plant with a capacity of up to 1.5 million tonnes/year that would use Shell’s OMEGA technology.
• A 300,000-tpy linear alpha olefins plant using Shell’s SHOP process.
• A plant for production of another unidentified olefin derivative.
Production from the complex, which was to be jointly owned by QP (80%) and Shell (20%), was planned to be marketed primarily into Asia-Pacific.