Qatar expands gas output with $1B boil-off gas recovery project

By MOHAMMED ALY SERGIE
Bloomberg

Qatar, the world’s biggest producer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), is gathering even more gas with a $1 billion plant that is recovering what used to be wasted fuel.

The Jetty Boil-Off Gas Recovery Project, known as JBOG, will salvage 29 billion cubic feet/year of gas, enough to power 300,000 homes, Qatar Liquefied Gas Co. said in a statement Tuesday. Since the plant started in October in Ras Laffan Industrial City north of Doha, it has recovered gas from over 500 ships.

“We don’t have an expectation of an economic return from the project, but we will benefit from the recovered gas,” Saad Sherida al-Kaabi, Qatar Petroleum’s CEO, said Tuesday at an inauguration ceremony for the project.

The JBOG has capacity to produce about 100 million cubic feet/day of natural gas, or the equivalent of 600,000 tpy of LNG, making it the world’s biggest plant of its kind.

Gas that used to be burned off or lost through evaporation when fuel was loaded on ships is instead being sent to Qatar’s 14 LNG production plants, which had a combined output of about 77 million tons last year. LNG is gas cooled to a liquid for transportation by ship instead of by pipeline.

The plant is a joint venture of Qatar Petroleum, the country’s state-controlled energy company, ExxonMobil, Total, Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips. It’s operated by Qatar Liquefied Gas, known as QatarGas, on behalf of Qatar Petroleum and Ras Laffan Liquefied Natural Gas Co.

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