Technip, Sasol form engineering alliance on GTL
Technip and Sasol, the owner of the world’s leading gas-to-liquids (GTL) technology, have established an alliance for front-end engineering services for future Sasol GTL projects, the companies said on Wednesday.
The alliance also allows for Technip’s participation during the execution stage of future GTL projects. Officials said the alliance, which builds on existing relationships, aims to achieve strong capital productivity through the highest standards of HSE, operability, accelerated innovation and reduced project cycle times.
GTL technology is a process for converting natural gas into petroleum products such as naphtha and diesel fuel that are very clean with effectively no pollution-causing sulfur or aromatic hydrocarbons.
The companies say the high-cetane number of the diesel fuel will help meet future more stringent specifications.
“Sasol is excited about its GTL future," said Lean Strauss, senior group executive at Sasol. "We are confident that in working closely together, the design and execution expertise of Technip will significantly further enhance the robustness of our GTL value proposition as we grow our business where our technology strength lies.”
GTL technology is becoming increasingly important not only for the environmental advantages of its products, but also because it provides an efficient and safe solution for the transportation of natural gas.
A large portion of gas reserves are considered unusable or “stranded” because they are too far from consumers and difficult to transport. GTL offers a way to convert stranded gas into petroleum products that can be transported and sold using conventional tankers, pipelines, storage facilities and retail distribution systems.
Technip's operating center in Rome, Italy, which serves as its reference and main execution center for GTL, will be in charge of managing the alliance. Its tasks will include strengthening the relationship between the Technip Stone & Webster Process Technology center in Boston, Massachusetts, with Sasol Technology for the hydrocarbon synthesis technology section.
“Through the acquisition of Stone & Webster process technologies, Technip has become the exclusive co-developer of Sasol’s hydrocarbon synthesis reactor technology," said Nello Uccelletti, Technip’s senior vice president for onshore work.
"We are proud to be Sasol’s contractor of choice for its future GTL facility projects, thereby confirming both our leading position worldwide as one of the few contractors with experience in major GTL facilities and our long-term relationship with Sasol," he added.
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