Velocys to provide technology to Pinto Ohio GTL project
The Houston-based Pinto Energy (Pinto) has selected Ashtabula in the Ohio, USA to build its first unit of series of small scale unit of gas-to-liquids (GTL) transformation.
Considering the long standing gap between the natural gas prices and the low sulfur diesel price, Pinto Energy identified the opportunity to develop small scale GTL plants.
With this concept, Pinto intends to optimize the benefit resulting in some states of the USA of the sustainable supply of competitive feedstock provided by Utica, or Marcellus shale gas basins, in the same time as the strong local demand for transportation fuels.
Since 2009, the gas price at the Henry hub, remained well below the $5 per million British Thermal Unit (mmbtu) while the low sulfur diesel, indexed on crude oil and refined products prices, has more than doubled from $10 per mmbtu to $23 mmbtu.
As the production of natural gas in USA will continue to exceed the domestic consumption of refined products, Pinto is joining Shell and Sasol to believe that this gap between natural gas and crude oil will last many years in USA, paving the way to highly profitable GTL projects.
As a result, no less than 24 GTL projects have been announced in USA representing more than $60 billion capital expenditure.
Anyway the comparison with Shell and Sasol stops here as Pinto is planning to develop GTL production units as simple as possible to reduce costs and to multiply the locations to stand as close as possible from the sources of shale gas supply and from the diesel local market.
To develop its new GTL concept, Pinto selected the Fischer-Tropsch (FT) technology from the recently re-branded Velocys Inc (Velocys).
Pinto awarded Ohio GTL EPC contract to Ventech
In September 25th 2013, Oxford Catalysts Group PLC and Velocys PLC completed their merger with a unique organization and a new brand, Velocys , in order to promote their advanced technology in small scale GTL production units.
With a modular design of 1,400 barrel per day (b/d) capacity, Velocys is proposing a technology to reduce construction costs and lead time on site.
This compact design is also giving access to areas with limited space and infrastructures.
From its local office in Ohio, Velocys is providing Pinto with the design of its Ohio GTL project.
For this Ohio GTL project, Pinto took ownership of only 80 acres site in Ashtabula where it should produce 2,800 b/d liquids from natural gas delivered from Utica and Marcellus shale gas fields.
This Ashtabula site will benefit from existing power lines, water supply and waste water treatment and contributing to reduce the overall capital expenditure of Pinto GTL project.
With this modular design, Pinto expects to run its GTL facility with only 30 headcounts.
Pinto awarded the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to Ventech Engineering International (Ventech) in targeting the first commercial operations of the Ohio GTL project to start in 2016.
