Shell GTL offers Egypt petrol self-sufficiency

Royal Dutch/Shell Group yesterday confirmed plans to invest $1.7 billion in an Egyptian gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant that could lead to use of domestic gas reserves to satisfy its entire oil products market for over 50 years.
Egypt is currently an importer of oil products. The oil giant agreed initial terms on the deal early in October.
Shell said it had now signed a development protocol with the Egyptian General Petroleum Corp for a 75,000 barrels per day GTL conversion plant to convert natural gas to synthetic fuels.
The project now also has the approval of Egypt's Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy, Shell said.
Production using Shell's Middle Distillate Synthesis (SMDS) process could be in place by late 2005, while a plant at the same site making liquified natural gas (LNG) could be up and running earlier, by mid-2004.
Shell said the converters, to be built at West Demiatta on the Mediterranean coast, would employ 500-600 people, with most to be recruited and trained locally.
The Anglo-Dutch group already runs the world's only commercial scale GTL conversion plant at Bintulu in Malaysia.
The seven-year-old 12,000 bpd operation restarted operations in July after a fire that damaged it in December 1997.
Shell is also conducting a feasibility study for similar 75,000 bpd facilities in Trinidad and Tobago and in Iran.