Biomass To Gasoline -- How Did This Boondoggle Turn Out? January 18, 2025

Locator: 44707BIOMASS.

Whatever happened to this story?

Update, January 18, 2025:

Update On The Trenton GTL Plant -- November 16, 2021

See this post for background.

Update here.

Agreement with Cerilon GTL. Williams County:

• will provide a no-interest $6 million loan agreement
• three loan payments of $2 million each
• first won't be disbursed until company has executed a land purchase agreement (which could happen today)
• the second payment: March, 2022
• the third payment: July, 2022
• loan to be repaid in quarterly installments once commercial operations begin or after seven years, whichever comes first.
• for the $.28 billion gas-to-liquid plant in Trent, previously announced.

Construction to begin 2021.

Initial capacity: 24,000 bbls per day of ultra-low sulfur diesel and other specialty products.

About 80 full-time employees.

Trenton Lands One Of State's Largest Economic Expansion Projects To Date -- Source -- October 14, 2021

Locator: 10201GTL.

Tag: GTL Trenton 

Updates

November 16, 2021: update here. Williams County loan.

Original Post 

If this doesn't blow you away, nothing will.

Population of Trenton, ND: 372 people. 

Link here. 

Trenton, ND: a few miles southwest of Williston, ND.

Gas-to-liquids plant.

Canada-based Cerilon GTL.

But look at this, for little ol' Trenton: a $2.8 billion plant.

Will start with an initial 24,000 bpd of ultra-low sulfur diesel, and:

• military-grade jet fuel;
• naphtha,
• Group III base oils

Construction to begin in early 2023.

Infrastructure already in place:

• rail
• pipeline
• also has carbon sequestration opportunities

Company anticipates future construction phases and more facilities as part of  its overall vision for the complex.

“The Cerilon GTL complex has the potential to be one of the largest economic expansion projects in the history of North Dakota,” he said. “GTL facilities support the oil industry while reducing environmental impacts. The Williams County facility will be one of many expansions that make North Dakota a leader in carbon neutrality.”

If Governor Burgum had anything to do with getting this project in North Dakota, he needs to be declared governor for life.

Now, if he could only get the NDIC website working.

Biomass To Gasoline -- Updating Sundrop Fuels -- November 27, 2016

Locator: 10010BIOMASS.

Updates

January 18, 2025: see this post. 

 Original Post

Updating an old post: Sundrop Fuels / EERC -- biomass conversion to gasoline. Pilot facility near Alexandria, Louisiana, but as of 2014/2015, a process demonstration facility now in operation at North Dakota's Energy and Environmental Research Center.

Update On World's Largest Gas-To-Liquid (GTL) Plant In The World -- July 30, 2014

Rigzone is reporting:

In 2008, Shell announced it would partner with Qatar Petroleum and build Pearl GTL in order to produce cleaner-burning diesel and kerosene, base oils for top-tier lubricants, a chemical feedstock called naphtha (used to make plastics) and normal paraffin, which is used to produce detergents.

Today, the plant in Ras Laffan Industrial City, 80km north of Doha, Qatar, is the largest gas-to-liquids plant in the world.

At the peak of construction 52,000 workers from 65 countries were deployed on the site and overall it took the team 500 million man-hours to design and build.

As well as being the biggest, Pearl GTL is also one of the most complex and challenging energy projects in the world – the GTL technology alone has 3,500 patents.

The statistics are staggering: to build Pearl GTL a total of 750,000 cubic metres of concrete was poured. That’s enough to construct two Burj Khalifas (the world’s tallest building).

Pearl GTL draws on gas from Qatar’s North Field, estimated to hold 900 trillion cubic feet of gas. That’s an estimated 13% of the world’s total.

For The Record: Shell To Shelve GTL Plant In Louisiana

Bloomberg is reporting:

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s biggest oil company, halted plans to build a $20 billion gas-to-liquids plant in Louisiana, citing the potential cost and uncertainty about future crude and natural gas prices.

The project would have used natural gas to produce 140,000 barrels a day of liquid fuels and other products normally made from oil, The Hague-based company said in a statement today. Despite ample U.S. gas supplies from a boom in shale production, gas-to-liquids isn’t “a viable option for Shell in North America,” the company said.

Shell started the first commercial gas-to-liquids plant in 1993, using a process developed in Germany and used to make fuels during World War II. The company completed the $19 billion Pearl gas-to-liquids facility, the world’s largest, in Qatar in 2011. South Africa’s Sasol Ltd., the largest producer of motor fuel from coal, announced plans last year to build a $14 billion gas-to-liquids plant in Louisiana.

“While we cannot speak to another company’s plans, we continue to view our proposed GTL facility in Louisiana as a very attractive opportunity as we advance it through the front-end engineering and design phase,” Russell Johnson, a spokesman for Johannesburg-based Sasol, said in an e-mail today.

The economic viability of turning natural gas into fuels depends on the relationship between oil and gas prices.

For a gas-to-liquids plant to make money, a barrel of oil has to trade at a ratio of about 16 times the cost of a million British thermal units of natural gas, Sasol Chief Executive Officer David Constable said in an interview last year.

Update: Project to Begin; $12 - $14 Billion Project -- SERIOUS -- For Investors Only: Sasol Ltd -- Natural Gas -- Methanol

Updates

August 26, 2016: an update. 

December 4, 2012: Link to Oil & Gas Journal.

Sasol will proceed with front-end engineering and design for an integrated gas-to-liquids plant and ethane cracker with downstream derivatives at the company’s site near Lake Charles, LA.

The GTL plant will be the first of its kind in the US and produce 4 million tonnes/year (tpy; 96,000 b/d) of transportation fuel, including GTL diesel and other chemicals.

Sasol’s own feasibility study proposed the Louisiana plant produce GTL diesel, GTL naphtha, LPG, GTL base oils, paraffin, linear alkyl benzene, and medium and hard wax.
Sasol estimates current project costs for the plant at $11-14 billion. The project will be delivered in two phases, each consisting of 48,000 b/d. The first phase is to begin operations in 2018, the second in 2019.

Original Post

SSL was mentioned briefly by Jim Cramer today.

Sasol Announces Feasibility Study to Build the First U.S. Gas-to-Liquids Facility

JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 13, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- South African energy and chemicals group Sasol today announced that it has chosen the southwestern region of the State of Louisiana as the site for a planned gas-to-liquids (GTL) facility. The project is slated to be the first plant in the U.S. to produce GTL transportation fuels and other products.

In a press conference today with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, Sasol Managing Director: New Business Development Ernst Oberholster said, "We believe Sasol's proprietary GTL technology can help unlock the potential of Louisiana's clean and abundant natural gas resources and contribute to an affordable, reliable and high quality fuel supply for the United States."

"GTL fuels are an important part of the energy mix because they can advance energy independence in a way that is both cost-efficient and environmentally friendly," said Oberholster. In addition, unlike other proposed alternatives to conventional petroleum-based fuels, GTL fuel is used in existing vehicles and fuel delivery infrastructure without modifications.

Implications for the Bakken?

What is methanol? Wiki provides nice quick review.

Seeking Alpha on Chesapeake -- Not a Bakken Story

I don't follow Chesapeake but this is an interesting "op-ed" regarding the company over at SeekingAlpha.com.

This is an article about the "holy grail" of the natural gas industry: to find a process to convert natural gas to liquid fuel, such as diesel.

At least that's what I think the article is saying.

If so, there is technology out there and it is working. I just don't know if the technology is scalable and / or profitable. But if I understand what the author over at SeekingAlpha is saying, I wonder why Syntroleum, Sasol, or Shell were not mentioned?

From a very recent NY Times article:

A South African firm, Sasol, announced Monday that it would spend just over 1 billion Canadian dollars to buy a half-interest in a Canadian shale gas field, so it can explore turning natural gas into diesel and other liquids. Sasol’s proprietary conversion technology was developed decades ago to help the apartheid government of South Africa survive an international oil embargo, and it is a refinement of the ones used by the Germans to make fuel for the Wehrmacht during World War II.

I find that incredible. South Africa used the technology decades ago to help survive an international oil embargo, and Americans are willing to pay $104 for oil and $4 for gasoline ........

..... the "lost decade."

ADDED TO ORIGINAL POSTING:

Here's a nice op-ed on South Africa, Sasol, and the international oil embargo. I find it interesting what Chesapeake CEO did not say. It suggests CHK is way behind the "8-ball" on this one. I find it amazing that he has not been called out on it. DKRW is doing this (natural gas to gasoline and diesel) in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, also. Who's CHK trying to kid?