Potentials for the Shale Gas Monetization: Lessons Learned from the Qatari Experience with Natural Gas

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station, College Station TX

Investigators

Abstract

PI: El-Halwagi, Mahmoud M. Proposal Number: 1355572 Institution: Texas Engineering Experiment Station Title: Potentials for the Shale Gas Monetization: Lessons Learned from the Qatari Experience with Natural Gas For biofuel production to become commercially feasible, shale gas is emerging as a bridge component to smoothen the intermittency of biomass supply and for upgrading to a drop-in fuel. Rather than "re-inventing the wheel" it would be beneficial to learn from the economies that have already been monetizing methane. The goal of this project is to organize a workshop on The Potentials of Shale Gas Monetization considering the Lessons Learned from Qatar's Natural Gas Monetization, in March 2014. The PIs will organize this workshop in Texas to cover research, educational, and best-practice topics in shale gas processing and monetization and will extract key lessons from the experiences in Qatar (which has the world?s largest gas-to-liquid (GTL) facilities and is the world?s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG)). The workshop will be targeted at participants from academic and industrial organizations. Methane gas-to-liquid fuel conversion has been expensive due to the low energy efficiency and need for a high capital investment. This workshop will focus on highlighting Qatar?s experience in monetizing its natural gas resources while providing techno-economic assessments of the physical treatment (Liquefied Natural Gas or LNG) and the chemical conversion (Gas-to-Liquid or GTL). The workshop will include world's leading experts from industry and academia, and will offer a wide range of perspectives which will enhance the intellectual merit of research being carried out by the US researchers. The workshop will identify the future educational and research opportunities, directions, and emerging trends in natural gas monetization. Attending US graduate student and other researchers will benefit from the workshop, as they could ?leap frog? their technology development. It will also highlight the importance of collaboration between academia and industry to advance exiting commercial technologies and to participate in development of new generations. The workshop will include discussion between academia and industry in institutionalizing undergraduate and graduate-level curriculum changes to provide the energy market with skilled engineers and scientists in the field of natural gas processing.