Securing the Supplies of Fossil Fuels - Energy and Climate: How to Achieve a Successful Energy Transition - page 103

pathway) appeared as an attractive option for utilising large quantities of
natural gas located far from consuming areas (stranded gas). In 2000,
large projects were announced in Qatar, for producing liquid fuels from
natural gas extracted from the North Dome field, which is the biggest gas
field in the world. The Oryx GTL project has been initiated with the
participation of Qatar Petroleum, of the SouthAfrican company Sasol and
the American company Chevron. A first 34 000 barrels per day (around
1.7Mt/year) unit has been built and started production in 2006. Other
projects have been announced. If they are implemented, the resulting capa-
citywould exceed 800 000 barrels per day forQatar alone. The investments
required are huge: more than 900millionUS $ for the 34 000 barrels per
day unit built by Oryx GTL and 1.3 billionUS $ for a comparable unit
built in Nigeria.
Increasing costs for materials and manpower combined with the recent
surge of the price of natural gas have contributed to a slowdown in
operations. Nevertheless, the growth in demand for engine fuels should
stimulate new investments in this area in the future.
In the longer term, if the price of oil rises and remains high long enough,
the production of synthetic fuels from coal (Coal to Liquids or CTL
pathway) can be expected to increase also. China has already decided to
move in that direction. The biggest mining company in China, Shenhua, is
planning to produce 30million tons a year (around 630 000 barrels per
day) of synthetic fuels from coal by 2020.
Other projects are considered, and if all these projects are implemented,
China would produce within 15 years more than 70million tons of
synthetic fuels starting from 210million tons of coal [87].
The production of synthetic fuels leads to comparatively large emissions
of CO 2 , especially if coal is the feedstock. In the case of the CTL pathway,
around half of the carbon used is emitted to the atmosphere in the form of
CO 2 , while the other half remains contained in the liquid fuel which is
produced. In the future industrial units producing synthetic fuels might
become a source of very large CO 2 emissions, unless the CO 2 released is
trapped and stored underground. Such an option can be considered for the
very large units which are planned, but it will increase costs, which are
already high.
Synthetic fuels can also be produced from biomass (biomass to liquids
or BTL pathway; cf. Chapter 6).