Assessment of Investment and Technical Knowledge Transfer Patterns of Gas Conversion Into Fuel and Liquid Chemical Products (GTL) And Presenting Executive Approaches

Rapid development of gas industry such as other energy sectors, has been affected from important technologies introduced from the middle of twentieth century. GTL technology to convert natural gas into fuel and liquid chemical products contributes to improving natural gas transportation to remote areas, increasing added value, recovering associated gas and converting it to high quality products as well as meeting environmental objectives. For these reasons, countries with large natural gas reserves have been encouraged to use and develop GTL. In this respect, this paper tries to present a brief introduction of GTL process as well as five executive approaches for desirable deployment of this technology. These approaches include establishing GTL plants with development and operation of gas fields, establishing independent GTL plants, establishing GTL plants beside power plants, establishing GTL plants beside LNG plants, and operating small GTL projects at the oil fields. Conditions and characteristics for investment, technical knowledge transfer and different contract formats such as foreign direct investment (FDI), license agreements, joint venture, buy back and build-operate-transfer (BOT), for five preceding approaches are also analyzed and compared. Finally, this paper introduces approaches for implementation of the prementioned contracting formats from techno-financial aspects.