Gas-to-liquids offers glimmer of promise for gas producers: GTL process could use existing pipeline to get gas to market. Tests still ongoing at Nikiski.

• Author: Jones, Patricia
• Position: Energy research

Energy researchers and scientists around the world are working to improve existing techniques involved in the process of converting natural gas into a commercially usable liquid.

Called gas-to-liquids, or GTL, the chemical process was first developed on a production scale during World War II in fuel-poor Germany. Two German scientists are credited with discovering the catalytic conversion of "syngas" into synthetic hydrocarbons, such as transportation fuels like diesel. Syngas, already a known technology back then, is created by compressing natural gas.

The end product of the gas-to-liquids process, a synthetic "white crude," burns much cleaner than diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum-based transportation products. But a major drawback to the GTL conversion process is that it traditionally requires a large amount of fuel-an expensive and inefficient use of natural gas, particularly when comparing the end product to development of existing crude oil sources.

Yet the GTL concept continued to intrigue the energy industry. Obvious applications are stranded gas supplies around the world, where conventional natural gas transportation systems are cost prohibitive. Alaska's large supply of natural gas on the North Slope fits perfectly into that category.

A number of research laboratories have partnered with energy industry companies to further advance GTL development. Alaska's oil producers are part of that global research effort, spending millions on research, laboratory tests and construction of pilot projects.

While GTL has previously been considered more of a dark horse in the race to develop North Slope gas, it is an option that seems to be gaining momentum.

BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. just finished construction of an $86 million GTL test plant, located on the Kenai Peninsula in Nikiski. Significant is that this plant tests several design aspects particularly applicable to such a plant operating on the North Slope.

"We're using our compact reformer technology, which is one quarter of the size of conventional technology, and that's the real breakthrough. It's not really the chemistry or the reactions," said Steve Fortune, BP Exploration's GTL program manager. "That substantially impacts a project being built somewhere particularly like the North Slope."

NORTH SLOPE GAS OVERVIEW

Since crude oil began flowing through the trans-Alaska oil pipeline in the mid-1970s, producers have been mulling over ways to commercialize an even larger energy resource located on the North Slope--natural gas.

While there's general agreement between producers and government geologists about the amount of natural gas easily recoverable from existing North Slope infrastructure--about 35 trillion...