DOHA: Qatargas has kick-started its US$1 billion project Jetty Boil-off Gas Recovery (JBOG) Project in Ras Laffan Industrial City. The project is designed to eliminate flaring at the LNG terminal. Its main shareholders are Qatar Petroleum, ExxonMobil, Total, ConocoPhillips and Shell, while the facilities are operated by Qatargas and RasGas.
Qatargas estimates that approximately 100 million ft3/day of previously wasted natural gas is now being recovered and utilised in the LNG plants as fuel. The JBOG Project is expected to save nearly 1 trillion ft3 of gas for the State of Qatar over a period of 30 years.
Fluor was awarded the Engineering, Procurement and Construction Management (EPCm) contract for the project in February 2010. The detailed design and procurement services were carried out at Fluor’s offices in Sugar Land, Texas, and New Delhi, India. General Electric (GE), Emerson and ABB supplied the project’s main equipment.
The construction of the project started in Ras Laffan City in mid-2011, with the bulk of the site work executed by the likes of Ammico, STFA, Qcon, Qatar Kentz and Medgulf. The work site saw a peak of around 3000 people working hard to finish the project.
The project design is based on the collection of the LNG boil-off gas from the LNG carriers and the transfer of this gas to a Central Compression Area via large diameter stainless steel pipelines. At the Central Compression Area, the gas is compressed and sent to the LNG trains for use as fuel gas or for conversion into LNG.
A significant part of the JBOG Project was devoted to upgrading around 85 LNG carrier ships to make them ready for recovering the boil-off gas. Ships ranging from Q-Max, Q-Flex, conventional Membrane and Moss type were covered successfully. This complicated work is largely complete, resulting in the achievement of the gas recovery target of 90%.
JBOG received a silver safety award from Qatar Petroleum in 2013, which recognised the outstanding efforts of the project to keep its workers safe from injury.
Qatargas Chief Operating Officer Engineering and Ventures, Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdulla Al-Thani, said: “Qatargas prides itself on its high safety standards. It is a matter of immense satisfaction for us that the JBOG Project Team completed the project with zero Lost Time Incident (LTI). Considering that the project spent three years in construction and spent over 22 million man-hours, the zero LTI is a fantastic record. I would also like to congratulate the JBOG Project Team, Qatargas Operations Development Department and all the relevant contractors for producing a facility which has started up safely and smoothly”.
