2002—Emergence of the Gas—to—Liquids Industry： a Review of Global GTL Developments

This paper reviews the status of the gas-to-liquids (GTL) industry | including current commercial plants, announced projects and the technologies that are likely to be implemented in these future projects. Today, only 35,000 B/D of GTL products (0.1% of market) are manufactured from commercial gas-based plants. Advances in technology have lowered the cost of plants to the point where GTL plants can be protable at crude oil prices of 16/B. The advanced stage of development of several proposed GTL projects and attractive integrated economics, for both the gas eld and plant, show that GTL can be a signican t alternative for monetizing natural gas in the 21st century. GTL technologies includes more than Fischer{Tropsch technology and extends to other liquid fuels, especially in the oxygenate family (methanol, dimethyl ether, etc.).