With a new $15 million financing in place, Calgary-based Rocky Mountain GTL says it has awarded a major construction contract for a facility near the city that will process flare gas, natural gas, and natural gas liquids into higher value, cleaner burning diesel and other premium liquid fuels.
It will be the first commercial scale gas-to-synthetic fuels operation in Canada, Rocky Mountain GTL says. The facility will use technology licensed from Greyrock Energy.
Rocky Mountain GTL has selected Midwest Construction Group as general contractor for the facility, located about 60 kilometres east of Calgary, near Carseland, Alberta.
The enhanced GTL (EGTL) plant is designed to process up to approximately 5.0 MMscfe/d of natural gas and natural gas liquids into a nominal 500 bbls/d of paraffinic synthetic diesel and naphtha. It forms the basis for future EGTL plants that are scalable from 5.0MMscfe/d to 50.0 MMsfce/d of natural gas capacity, the company says.
Field construction commenced May 2019.
Rocky Mountain GTL CEO James Ross says the facility will eliminate price or pipeline accessibility issues for producers by providing optionality to produce natural gas and associated liquids by converting this resource to synthetic diesel.
“The unconventional oil and gas boom and global anti-flaring initiatives have created an unprecedented opportunity for Rocky Mountain and its partners to be world leader in the conversion of natural gas to high performance, zero sulphur, low emission and low Carbon Index synthetic liquid fuels,” he said in a statement.
Rocky Mountain GTL says the Carseland plant will incorporate several unique environmental features, such as self-sustained water supply, self-sufficient on electric power, and will recycle significant process CO2 in order to produce additional synthetic diesel.
