Business | Opinion
With GTL, natural gas is going to be of high interest this year
I expect great things for natural gas in 2008, and now, with the recent spotlight trained on its derivative gas-to-liquid (GTL), I only see more interest in the fossil fuel that has long taken a back seat to oil.
- By Leah Bower, Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:31 February 4, 2008
I expect great things for natural gas in 2008, and now, with the recent spotlight trained on its derivative gas-to-liquid (GTL), I only see more interest in the fossil fuel that has long taken a back seat to oil.
GTL is a synthetic fuel that has been used in race cars, diesel engines and now jet engines.
Essentially, natural gas is altered through a chemical reaction to make a fuel comparable to conventional diesel. The difference, however, is that the higher cetane - similar to octane in gasoline - in GTL fuel lets it work in higher performance engines, such as those powering a jet airplane as well as in automobiles.
GTL fuel doesn't produce the same amount of fine particulate matter, much of which comes from sulphur and contributes heavily to air pollution, that traditional diesel does, and the waste it does produce has fewer carcinogens. There is no question it can fuel some pretty powerful engines.
The A380, the world's largest passenger aircraft, took a three-hour tour from Filton in the UK to Toulouse, France, last Friday using a GTL fuel. Although Airbus had little to say about the cost of producing the fuel, the A380, which seats 555 passengers and is taller than five double decker buses, made the trip with no hitches.
Already Airbus is predicting that roughly 25 per cent of aviation fuel will come from alternative sources by 2025, and the head of their alternative fuels research department is already eyeing biofuels, which are produced in a manner similar to GTL, as a possibility.
All this, thanks to the continuing high price of crude oil - projects that were once considered unfeasible are now becoming a reality. And new energy industries are springing up everywhere. And to think, Qatar once felt shortchanged that it only had natural gas reserves!
Brit billionaire Richard Branson is planning a February test of biofuels in a Boeing 747 en route from London's Heathrow airport to Amsterdam. Even the US Air Force is eyeing GTL fuels, and have now certified its C-17 and B-52 to use the synthetic derived from natural gas. They have even ordered that all aircraft must be certified to use GTL synthetics by 2010 and hope to source 70 per cent of their total fuel needs from GTL by 2025.
But it isn't just aircraft manufactures and airlines that are eyeing the potential of GTL fuels. Just last month, Audi whisked officials around at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Switzerland using a fleet of Audi A8s powered with a GTL fuel provided by Shell.
According to the company, the GTL fuel reduced the carbon dioxide production by 13 per cent, carbon monoxide by 93 per cent and fuel consumption was cut by 10 per cent. Most interestingly, Audi said all of its TDI diesel engines can use GTL fuels without any retrofitting.
The company's confidence in its engines was apparently fuelled by victories in the 2006 and 2007 24 Hours of Le Mans races, when the winning Audi R10 fitted with a TDI engine won using a diesel mixture largely composed of GTL fuel.
It is still a fossil fuel and we are still going to run out of it someday. But development of natural gas reserves around the world are running far behind oil fields, despite that new projects are being planned from Alaska's north slope to the deserts of Egypt.
While it might not be an extremely long-term replacement for oil, it looks as though it may be increasingly economically feasible. And, there seems to be little question that GTL, coupled with booming interest in liquid natural gas (LNG), is going to keep natural gas in the headlines and on investors' minds.
- The writer is a freelance journalist based in Alaska, USA.
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