Sour gas has flowed for the first time into the Pearl GTL

(ICIS) -- Sour gas has flowed for the first time into the Pearl GTL (gas to liquids) plant at Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar, Qatar Petroleum (QP) and Shell said on Wednesday. Shell is the operator of the unit, which is the largest GTL plant in the world, and said it had opened natural gas wells offshore to allow the gas to flow into the facility. ⌠Sections of the Pearl GTL plant will be started up progressively over the coming months, it added in a statement.

The giant energy project consists of two offshore platforms 60km off the coast of Qatar connected by pipeline to the GTL plant, which uses Fischer Tropsch technology to convert synthesis gas into long-chain hydrocarbons.

Pearl will produce 1.6bn cubic feet of gas a day from Qatar's North Field when fully operational, Shell said. The gas will be processed to generate 120.000 bbl/day of GTL gasoil, kerosene, base oils, n-paraffins and naphtha.

MRC

(ExxonMobil) -- Exxon Mobil Corporation said it would donate USD1 mln to the Japanese Red Cross Society to provide disaster relief assistance in response to the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The company has also implemented a worldwide program to match employee, retiree, dealer and distributor donations to Japanese disaster relief, up to a further USD 2 mln.

ExxonMobil affiliates employ approximately 2.900 people in Japan, and have petroleum and petrochemical refining and distribution, gas and power marketing and project engineering businesses in the country.

ExxonMobil Yugen Kaisha and TonenGeneral, ExxonMobil's affiliates in Japan, are working closely with Japanese authorities to ensure adequate fuel supply to emergency responders and the areas hit to assist in the recovery.

MRC

(Plastics Today) -- Plastics recycling machinery manufacturer Erema is making a major investment in a new Customer Test Center at its Austrian headquarters, according to Andreas Dirnberger, Erema's vice president of sales. As he explains, this investment enables us to separate trial runs for customers or prospective customers from trial runs for internal research and development. Currently Erema runs approximately 400 technical tests and experiments for customers per year.

Inside the test center will be available seven complete recycling plants. In-house recycling of film waste, collected industrial waste recycling as well as post consumer recycling applications such as PET bottle-to-bottle recycling will be ready to be tested after the opening of the new Customer Test Center.

Erema (Ansfelden, Austria) last year introduced its TVEplus Systems, and Dirnberger says the company already has placed 30 TVEplus Systems throughout the world. Another 40 of the systems are under construction based on orders through the end of this coming August.

MRC

(Arabian Oil and Gas) -- South Korea's Samsung Engineering revealed the USD 2.76 bln cost of its engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) packages for Saudi Aramco's Shaybah NGL (Natural Gas Liquid) project in eastern Saudi Arabia after sigining the deal at a ceremony on Monday at the Saudi NOC's headquarters in Dhahran.

This NGL facility will be located 800 km south east of Dhahran in Shaybah, and is expected to secure feedstock supplies for the kingdom's hydrocarbon business. The complex will produce 750.000 barrels of oil per day, process gas of 2.400 MMSCFD and recover 200.000 barrels of NGL per day.

MRC

(Reuters) -- Japan's JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp, an oil refining unit of JX Holdings, said on Tuesday it expects to restart its quake-hit Kawasaki naphtha cracker, with ethylene production capacity of 404 KTa, by the end of March.

The cracker has been shut since a magnitude 9.0 quake hit northeastern Japan. A company spokesman said product shipments were continuing.

MRC