Pearl GTL: getting set for start-up

The control room includes almost 1,000 circuitry control cabinets and 200 computer servers programmed with 12 million separate software codes. The system is linked to every part of the plant by almost 6,000 kilometres of cables, which would stretch from Doha to London if laid end-to-end.

The first turbines and auxiliary steam boilers have already begun to generate steam and electricity to power the plant. The first two oxygen separation units are up and running and almost all of the systems in the first GTL production plant are ready to swing into operation.

It took one million hours — the equivalent of 500 years of full time work for one person — to complete the conceptual design of the world’s largest gas-to-liquids plant. It took four years to build it. Tens of thousands of workers were trained to make sure all the sections of the plant are well built and will start up smoothly.

In designing and constructing Pearl, Shell drew on the experience of building major projects all around the world. Thousands of supervisors and craftsmen at the Pearl GTL plant were trained to make sure the lessons learned were taken on board and applied during construction and commissioning of the plant.

The complex plant contains a vast network of pipelines, with over one million joints connecting pipeline segments, known as flanges. Workers received specialist training in sealing the joints safely. Nothing can be left to chance.

“You’ve got to go round the whole plant and test it thoroughly. You have to visit every flange, every nut, every bolt, every instrument connection,” says Commissioning and Start Up Manager Stephen Johnson. “We have to make sure that they’re all tight, with no leaks.”
 
In Qatar, he brought to bear his experience of starting production at the Nanhai petrochemicals plant in China in which Shell and China’s CNOOC each have a 50% stake.

Commissioning will take at least 12 months, building up to full production in 2012. It will take 800 operators and technicians to operate Pearl GTL once the plant is in full operation.

The location of the plant in a remote desert poses a unique technical challenge. A layer of desert sand as fine as dust settles on all equipment exposed to open air, and it can get into equipment during construction. Gas turbines the size of jet engines are producing power and heat to generate steam to blow through the pipes at speeds of up to 300 kilometres per hour to clean them. The heat makes the pipelines expand. When they cool and shrink, the dust and other deposits flake off and are blown out.

Pipeline sections are being tested to withstand pressures of up to 100 bar (1,450 pounds per square inch) — about the same pressure created by hydraulic crushers to flatten cars — by running water through them under pressure. Pipelines that will contain gas are tested by filling and pressurising them with nitrogen and helium to detect any defects.

Shell is applying a meticulous system to manage quality, cleanliness and tightness during construction and starting up plants at projects under way in more than 20 countries.