“It is why companies like Shell built the GTL after the LNG facilities were already up and running in Qatar. Both were spending capital to build facilities to buy local natgas and export to another country. If there was greater profits to be made in LNG, I expect that they would have built that instead. With two other commercial GTL facilities, they had already proved their process and economics.”
When I recall Bintulu GTL being built, it was representing a small-scale “test” of GTL as it had never been commercialized prior to that time. Shell’s LNG was up and running an very profitable but LNG had reached virtual saturation conditions so Shell had difficulty in building more LNG trains and instead tried to see if GTL could create new markets, since Shell still had access to the cheap Brunei gas.
Their target was the high-end industrial users who needed very high quality product. Since Fischer-Tropsch essetially rearranged the hydrocarbon atoms in order to turn natural gas into kerosene, gasoline, naptha, or whatever, the product was essentially contaminant-free.
So GTL followed LNG as GTL was a lot more complicated and needed new markets, whereas LNG industry was simply supplying gas via liquefaction instead of pipeline.
Both need sources of very cheap raw feed.
BTW, I read somewhere that as a grassroot endeavor, the GTL never made the economics, and is now only profitable if opcosts are considered, no capital included.
Bintulu was a commercial test, could it be scaled up to commercial size economically.
But I don’t believe 15 years after Bintulu, they spent $18~19 billion as another test.