Qatargas starts up new project

The project involved drilling and recompleting offshore wells, adding new onshore facilities for sulfur handling and modifying existing LNG production trains 1, 2 and 3, the company said in a press release. The shareholders in Qatargas 1 are Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil, Total, Mitsui and Marubeni.

Qatargas is the largest LNG producing company in the world with an annual LNG production capacity of 42 MTA. Qatargas’ Ras Laffan Terminal Operations team operates all the oil products tank farms and related marine terminals at Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar. Ras Laffan is the largest LNG and oil products export terminal in the world. (QNA)

“This is indeed a significant achievement for Qatargas. We want to ensure Qatargas 1 can produce 10 MTA until the end of the concession in 2021 and well beyond. The Plateau Maintenance Project will help deliver that capability and enable Qatargas to continue to supply LNG safely and reliably to its customers. The project is yet another important milestone in Qatargas’ journey towards its Vision 2015, namely to be the World’s premier LNG company,” Qatargas’s CEO HE Sheikh Khalid bin Khalifa Al-Thani said.

“I would also like to congratulate the project team and the contractors on the safe and successful start-up of the project and thank all those involved for their hard work and commitment over the years,” he added.

In turn, HE Shaikh Khalid bin Abdulla Al-Thani, Qatargas chief operating officer for engineering and ventures, singled out the highest priorities on the project as the safety of workforce and ensuring no impacts to existing Qatargas assets or production.

“We added significant new onshore facilities to accommodate the increased volumes of feed gas and Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) from new wells. The additional quantities of H2S will be treated in the new onshore sulfur plant built as part of the project. The new sulfur plant is capable of treating over 1 billion cubic feet per day (BCFD) of offshore feed gas. Numerous new and upgraded compression and utility units were also added.”

The onshore project had a major ‘brownfield’ component, meaning virtually all of the work scope was conducted within existing operating facilities and equipment. The nature of the work presented a special challenge which required tremendous communication and alignment between several departments across Qatargas.

For his part, Qatargas PMP project manager James Ierubino said the project team and contractors have worked over 42 million man-hours in a “very difficult” work environment, “achieving world class safety performance, including an exceptional Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) of 0.23 for every 200,000 hours worked (which equals one medical treatment or lost time injury occurring for every 1.25 million hours worked).”

“More importantly, the project was shining example of Qatargas’ ‘Incident and Injury Free’ culture, particularly our application of the STOP safety observation program, where a peak workforce of 6500 completed over 665,000 observation cards which helped identify and mitigate safety risks,” Ierubino added.