GCC countries have woken up to the prospect of adding value to their primary export products, crude oil and natural gas, as the growing petrochemical complexes in Ruwais, Abu Dhabi, and in Saudi Arabia's Jubail and Yanbu testify.
But in terms of scale and ambition, the latest addition to Qatar's Ras Laffan industrial park is unmatched. At a cost of at least US$18 billion (Dh66.11bn), Shell is putting the finishing touches to a gigantic gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant. Once it is fully operational, which is expected to be by early next year, the Pearl GTL project will produce a total of 260,000 barrels per day (bpd) of marketable output, much of which will be products such as gasoil, a form of diesel, and kerosene, to be used as aviation fuel. Pearl is by far the biggest industrial hydrocarbons project to date. Over the life of the plant, it will process 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent of gas.
By entering a production sharing agreement with the state-owned Qatar Petroleum, Shell is funding the entire project but will be able to recover the investment costs as well as receive a share of the profits.
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