Gas To Liquids Project Could Cut Oil Production Costs

An Alaska company wants to help reduce the cost of producing oil on the North Slope.  Alaska Natural Gas to Liquids, based in Anchorage, is pitching a plan to construct a gas-to-liquids facility that could save the producers between $50 million and $100 million a year.

Richard Peterson, raspy voiced president and CEO of Alaska Natural Gas to Liquids, (ANGTL) is a mechanical engineer who has been in the energy field for the past forty years.Peterson spoke at a recent Mat Su Business Alliance luncheon to pitch a 650 million dollar project, that, he says, will save costs to oil and gas producers.

“Those producers must import about a hundred thousand gallons a day of diesel. Where do you make ultra-low sulphur diesel in Alaska? Tesoro Nikiski. So the diesel that is required to be used on the North Slope, comes out of Tesoro, Nikiski, has to be transported all the way to the North Slope. Nine hundred miles of transport. This adds an enormous amount of cost.”

 ANGTL would like to bring that cost down, by providing the technology for producing clean burning diesel on site at the North Slope.  According to Peterson, the process that enables natural gas to be converted to a liquid fuel has been around since World War 2. His proposed facility would convert natural gas into a low sulphur, clean burning diesel fuel.

 “We’d like to bring the first commercial plant in the United States to Alaska, ”  he said.

 Peterson showed photos of gas to liquids reactors, at least one now in use by Shell in Qatar, which produces 140 thousand barrels of diesel a day. But other types of reactors produce diesel on a smaller scale. He said that the mega- facilities “don’t translate to Alaska right now,” but the smallest unit, could be adapted to Alaska’s needs, if built correctly.

“To make it economic, it has to be built in modular form.”

 He says the modules could be built in state, and shipped to the North Slope,  although the  reactors themselves would be built elsewhere.

“You cannot stick built stuff like this on the North Slope. The cost is just too high.  So you need to go to places where you can build them, then transport them by road, rail or ship, to the site.  The Valley happens to have three of those, so why wouldn’t you start looking at potentially building those small scale modules in a place like the Valley?”

 Peterson says the small project’s cost, which includes a building to house the reactor, at 650 million dollars, …” is a tad too big for financing within the state, so we are going outside the state.” Peterson did not indicate where outside the state he was looking, although he said Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority [AIDEA] is interested in the project.

He says, in saving oil producers some production costs, his company can help oil companies to do more to create opportunities for small businesses and for alternative energy projects.