We submit this information on Qatar's gas-to-liquids industry as we have discovered, since we first reported on the conversion activity there, that they have not just one gas-to-liquid plant under development, but six, at least. And, those plants are being developed by some very major corporations, including: Sasol-Qatar Petroleum (JV), Sasol-Chevron (JV), ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Marathon.
An excerpt:
"Qatar Petroleum is actively pursuing a number of world-scale gas-to-liquids conversion projects for the production of synthetic fuels and base oil stocks. The projects are all integrated with offshore development to supply the large amounts of gas needed for these projects. These are active business opportunities that are being pursued, but the status of each of the projects is still at the preliminary stage. A brief summary for each project is given."
The report, in fact, is some years old, and we do not yet know the current status of any of the projects. We submit this information to illustrate that fuel conversion is a very real industry. Each of the players mentioned above and in the body of the report have their own proprietary conversion technologies, and we have previously detailed some of them for you relative to converting coal into liquid fuels and chemicals.
And, that's the point: Processes which can convert natural gas into liquid fuel will convert, with minor adaptation, "syngas", generated from coal, into liquid fuel.
The technology and it's rewards, obviously, are quite real, or the heavyweights noted above wouldn't be climbing so eagerly into such a crowded ring.