SPE-189120-MS

Techno-Economic Assessment of Mini-GTL Technologies for Flare Gas

Monetization in Nigeria

Sunday Kanshio and Hezekiah Ogo Agogo, Baze University, Abuja; Ternenge Joseph Chior, Nile University of
Nigeria, Abuja

Copyright 2017, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition held in Lagos, Nigeria, 31 July – 2 August 2017.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
Nigeria recently endorsed the World Bank's zero routine flaring by 2030 initiative and raised her own goal
to 2020. As a step towards achieving the 2020 flare out goal, the Ministry of Petroleum Resources has
established a national gas flare commercialization framework. Under this framework, licenses would be
issued to third parties who would become off-takers of the gas. While this framework presents opportunity
for investment, most of the oil fields where the gas is being flared may be far from existing pipelines and
process infrastructures. Additionally, flare gas is often associated with volume, composition and pressure
fluctuations, which make technology selection for its utilization more challenging. This paper reviewed
some technologies for flare gas recovery and utilization, and identified promising technologies with
capabilities of handling flare gas volume below 1 MMscfd. Mini gas-to-liquid (mini-GTL) technologies
for producing diesel, methanol and anhydrous ammonia developed by Greyrock, GasTechno and Proton
Ventures, respectively, were selected. The technical viability and economic benefits of these technologies
were evaluated based on feed gas rate of 500 Mscfd. While all the technologies are technically viable, the
gross profit margin of the GasTechno's miniGTL technology with methanol as the GTL product was found
to be more attractive.

Introduction
Considerable large volume of natural gas is still being routinely flared at various oil fields in Nigeria despite
various attempts by the Nigerian government to curb flaring. Gas flaring constitutes a major waste of
valuable energy resource. This resource, if properly harnessed, could generate significant revenue for the
country as well as create thousands of jobs for unemployed population and boost the economy of the country.
The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of miniGTL
technologies that could be used to convert low volume flare gas into liquid fuel or chemicals. The key
contribution of this paper is the selection and presentation of technical and economic evaluation of three
miniGTL technologies considering the new flare gas commercialisation landscape initiated by the Ministry
of Petroleum Resources of Nigeria. The term mini-GTL is referred to technologies that can convert low
2 SPE-189120-MS

natural gas volume from 100 Mscfd to 25 MMscfd into liquid fuels and chemicals1. The focus of this paper
is on technologies that are skid mounted and can utilise gas feed stock below 1 MMscfd.
In Nigeria, gas flaring could be described as a means for safe evacuation of associated gas that is brought
to the surface during oil production. The main reason often adduced by oil companies for evacuating
the associated gas through this wasteful manner is lack of infrastructure such as pipeline and processing
facilities. Considering that Nigeria is a developing economy, inadequate market for the raw gas could be
one of the reasons why oil producing companies are not keen on investing in the necessary infrastructure
that would utilise the associated gas. During field development planning, there is usually no consideration
regarding what to do with the associated gas other than reinjection for reservoir pressure maintenance where
possible and fuel for power generation for local usage at the production plant. In most cases, large volume
of the associated gas must be disposed safely by burning it in a controlled manner since there is no any
other economic use for it. In 2016, total volume of gas flared from 215 operating fields in Nigeria was
771 mmscd, representing 18% of total associated gas produced2. To put this in perspective, assume this
volume of gas flared was utilized for power generation, revenue of $1.9 million per day would have been
generated for the government based on $2.50 per 1000 scf (the current regulated price of gas for the power
sector3). In addition to economic waste of gas resource, large volume of carbon dioxide is emitted during
gas flaring. Carbon dioxide is one of the greenhouse gases responsible for ozone layer depletion that causes
global warming and climate change.
In an effort to stop the wastage of gas resource and reduce carbon dioxide emission, the World Bank
launched the Global Gas Flare Reduction partnership (GGFR) in 2002. In 2015, the World Bank also
introduced another initiative tagged "Zero Routine Flaring by 2030". Several oil companies, governments
and development institutions have endorsed this laudable initiative since its inception. In 2016, Nigerian
government did not only endorse the World Bank initiative but also set ambitious target to end its own
gas flaring by 2020. As a first step toward actualising the Nigerian government's ambition, the Ministry
of Petroleum Resources (MPR) has initiated the national gas flare commercialisation programme whereby
the flare gas is now considered as a commodity that a third party could buy through a competitive bidding
process. This new initiative has now opened a massive opportunity for investors to buy and utilise the gas
that otherwise would have been flared. According to study by the MPR, more than eighty percent (80%) of
the flare gas volume is sufficient for any utilization investment4.

Gas monetization technologies

Several gas monetization technologies exist that could be used to extinguish flares in Nigeria. Some of the
most promising technologies are briefly discussed in this section.

Gas-to-Wire (GtW)
Presently, much of natural gas transported is used for electricity generation at the final destination5. Through
gas-to-wire (GtW), generation of electricity can be done anywhere, particularly at or near the reservoir
source and transported by cable to the required destination(s). For instance, offshore or isolated gas could be
used to fuel an offshore power plant (may be sited in less hostile waters), which would generate electricity
for sale onshore or to other offshore customers5. The challenges of GtW include high cost of installing
power lines, significant energy loss from the cables along the long distance transmission lines and large
volume of gas needed for power generation5.

Natural Gas Liquids (NGL) Extraction

Associated gas (AG) is composed of methane and natural gas liquids (NGL). NGL is mainly composed of
ethane, propane, butane, and heavier hydrocarbons. OFG is dissolved in or volatilized from petroleum due to
the changing pressure in the process of crude oil exploitation. Recovery of NGL from OFG will upgrade the
quality of commodity natural gas, while heavier hydrocarbons recovered are of higher value than methane6.
SPE-189120-MS 3

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)

Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is natural gas that has been cooled to the point that it condenses to a liquid, a
transformation occurring at a temperature of approximately −256°F (−162°C) and at atmospheric pressure7.
The technology is particularly helpful where pipeline transportation is less attractive due to technical,
logistical or political reasons. Therefore, LNG technology makes natural gas available throughout the World.
Conventional LNG plants require large feed gas volumes, in the range of 450 – 600 MMscfd or 3.8 – 5.5
mtpa (metric tons per annum) per LNG train. Therefore, substantial investment in upstream gas gathering
will be required to develop small remote gas reserves into onshore LNG. These factors limit the prospects
of developing remote stranded gas via conventional LNG.

Gas-to-Liquid
Gas-to-liquids is a catalytic process which involves the chemical conversion of natural gas (primarily
methane) into liquid hydrocarbons - naphtha, diesel, and waxes7. GTL is one of the appropriate options in the
utilization of flared natural gas. The main end products of GTL include naphtha and transportation fuels such
as diesel and jet fuels. Other products include high quality lubes, waxes and white oils, which are utilized
in the food and pharmaceutical industries. A GTL unit comprises of three core technologies: synthesis gas
(syngas) manufacture, Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) synthesis and hydrocracking8. Mini GTL technologies have
been developed with natural gas feedstock capacities ranging from 200 Mscfd to 25 MMscfd.
It can be seen from the brief review of flare gas utilization technologies that, GtW, NGL and LNG require
larger volumes of natural gas feedstock than GTL (especially mini GTL). GTL could be used to monetize
low flare gas volume with minimum infrastructure and investment. Again, GTL products are liquid fuels
and chemicals (such as alcohols and ammonia), which means that their market potential is wider than other
monetization technologies.

Fischer-Tropsch GTL process and chemistry

The basic F-T GTL process consists of three fundamental process steps, which require significant supporting
infrastructure and a secure feed gas supply to function effectively9.

Step 1
The production of synthesis gas (syngas). Carbon and hydrogen are initially divided from the methane
molecule and reconfigured by steam reforming and/or partial oxidation. The syngas produced consists
primarily of carbon monoxide and hydrogen9.

Step 2
Catalytic (F-T) synthesis. The syngas is processed in Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) reactors of various designs
depending on the technology, creating a wide range of paraffinic hydrocarbons product (synthetic crude,
or syncrude), particularly those with long-chain molecules (e.g. those with as many as 100 carbons in the
molecule)9.
2
Which in practice operates more typically as:
3
4 SPE-189120-MS

Step 3
Cracking - product workup. The syncrude is refined using conventional refinery cracking processes to
produce diesel, naphtha and lube oils for commercial markets. By starting with very long chain molecules,
the cracking processes can be adjusted to an extent to produce more of the products in demand by the market
at any given time. In most applications, it is the middle distillate diesel fuels and jet fuels that represent the
highest-value bulk products with lubricants offering high-margin products for more limited volume markets.
In modern plants, F-T GTL unit designs and operations tend to be modulated to achieve desired product
distribution and a range of product slates9
A simplified GTL-F-T process is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1—A simplified GTL Process.

GTL Technologies
There are several developers of GTL technologies in the world as can be seen in Table 1. These technologies
are at various stages of development and some have even ready for commercial development10. The
accelerated development in small and mini scale GTL technologies is due to the advocacy by the World Bank
group. In this work, we have studied some of these technologies with special consideration on minimum
amount of gas feedstock required and type of product. In the section that follows, GTL technologies from
Greyrock, GasTecho and Proton Venture were selected for further investigation.

Table 1—GTL technologies1

Companies Technology Products Feed Gas/Plant Size

Proton Ventures NFUEL Anhydrous Ammonia 140 Mscfd/ 3 tpd

GasTechno Partial Oxidation (POX) Methanol, ethanol 200 Mscfd and above

Maverick Synfuels GTL-FT Methanol/derivatives 300 Mscfd-1 MMscfd

Greyrock Energy GTL-FT(unconventional) Diesel/Crude oil 500 Mscfd/50 bpd

Infra Technology GTL-FT Diesel/Methanol 1 MMscfd/100 bbl

Oberon GTL Dimethyl ether (DME) 1.3 MMscfd/10,000 gpd

Velocys, GTL-FT Diesel 2 MMscfd/200 bpd

EFT Technology GTL-FT Jet fuel 2.5 MMscfd/250 bpd

PRIMUS STG+ Methanol 5 MMscfd

GIE GTL-FT Diesel 6-20 MMscfd/600-2000 bpd

Standard Alcohol Mixed alcohol process Mixed alcohol 500 bpd

AUM Energy Unitel DME Technology Dimethyl ether (DME) 10 MMscfd

SGC Energia, GTL-FT(XTLH) Diesel/Jet fuel 12 MMscfd/1100 bbl/1100 bpd

TIGAS MTG or STG Gasoline/DME 15,000 bpd

Compact GTL, GTL-FT Diesel and Others 25 MMscfd/2500 bpd

SPE-189120-MS 5

Description of the selected technologies

Following critical review of the existing mini-GTL technologies, three technologies were selected for
further evaluation for application to flare gas monetization in Nigeria. The key criteria for the selection
was minimum volume of gas feed stock required (200 Mscfd – 1 MMscfd). The GTL technologies listed
in Table 1 showed three common products routes which are: liquid hydrocarbons, alcohols and ammonia.
One technology was then selected for each of the product route. The selected technologies are presented
in Table 2 below.

Table 2—Selected technology and GTL products

Technology GTL product Vendor

Mini-GTL ® Methanol, ethanol and formalin GasTechno, LLC

DFPTM M-CLASS Diesel or syncrude Greyrock

N-Flex Anhydrous ammonia Proton Ventures/Ammonia Casale

Greyrock's Direct Fuel Production (DFP) M-Class system (see Figure 2) with a footprint of 65×45 ft
can convert 500 Mscfd of associated gas to 50 bpd of clean oil or diesel11. The plant, which is developed
specifically for flare gas monetization, can be operated remotely. The liquid fuel production process begins
with feed gas treatment to remove impurities and contaminants followed by synthetic gas production
using steam methane reforming (SMR) process. Finally, proprietary catalysts called GreyCat (which is an
unconventional Fischer-Tropsch catalyst) are used to convert the syngas directly into clean oil. The GreyCat
eliminates the traditional Fischer-Tropsch reaction step that involves refining paraffin waxes into fuel. This
approach makes the Geyrock design modular and suitable for application for small flare gas volume.

Figure 2—Greyrock's DFPTM M-Class (Source:GGFR12)

The GasTechno's Mini-GTL technology converts raw gas directly into methanol in a single step process
that does not require catalyst. The patented technology uses partial oxidation reactor to achieve the single
step direct conversion of the natural gas into liquid fuel13. Apparently, this eliminates the traditional syngas
production step (see Figure 3).
6 SPE-189120-MS

Figure 3—(a) Conventional gas-to-liquid process compared to (b) GasTechno single-step partial oxidation process

Since catalysts are not required, the process is flexible on variations in gas composition. Elimination of
the syngas production stage results in significant cost reduction and makes this technology quite attractive.
The entire process plant comes in a 40 ft shipping container, which makes it easy to deploy it to a wellsite.
However, there is requirement for auxiliary units such as air separation unit, feed gas compressor unit, a
power generating set and liquid products tank. The GasTecho Mini-GTL requires 500 Mscfd feed gas to
produce 14.6 tpd of methanol14.
The N-Flex technology is a wheel skid mounted plant that is movable and can convert 140 Mscfd of
natural gas into 3 ton/day of anhydrous ammonia15. The mini ammonia plant was developed by Proton
Ventures of Netherlands and Ammonia Casale of Switzerland. The developers did not provide any detailed
technical and commercial information about this technology, but information on Proton Ventures website
indicates that the company has signed agreement to supply five (5) unit of the plant to the USA16.

Case study field

The case study field (name withheld) is an onshore marginal field located in Nigeria with a probable and
proven gas reserve of 199 Bscf. According to data available from the website of the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), significant volume of associated gas from this field is being flared as shown
in Figure 4. Considering the large volume of the gas reserve and the monthly flared gas volume, it can be
concluded that a mini-GTL plant size ranging from 200 Mscfd to 1 MMscfd of feed gas would be suitable
for monetizing the associated gas from this field.

Figure 4—Volume of associated gas flared and utilized from case study field (June 2015-May, 2016) (Source: NNPC)
SPE-189120-MS 7

MPR flare gas pricing framework

The MPR has developed a pricing framework for flare gas. The framework consists of three components,
namely signature bonus, gas handling fee and off-take tariff. The signature bonus, which would depend on
the size of the associated gas, would be fixed. A fixed handling fee would be charged uniformly for all
investors. The off-taker would pay tariff for the gas in a range like that of domestic gas market. The fee to
be paid by the off-taker is presented in Table 3. These prices were used as example by Gbite4 to illustrate
the revenue that would be generated for the government from commercialising the associated gas being
flared. Economic analysis in this paper would be based on this data since the price is within the range of
domestic gas price framework.

Table 3—MPR flare gas pricing framework

Price components Price ($)

Signature bonus 150,000

Handling fee 0.30 per MMBTU

AG off-take tariff 1.00 per MMBTU

Products and market

GTL products, which are either chemicals or liquid hydrocarbon, are highly valuable even more than crude
oil. GTL products include syncrude, diesel, gasoline, methanol, ethanol and formalin. In this work, the GTL
products of interest are diesel, methanol and ammonia because these products are highly valuable and of
high demand in the Nigerian market.
The diesel produced from natural gas is generally superior to diesel derived from crude oil because of
low sulphur content, high cetane number, low aromatics and low olefins17. Nigeria imports large volume of
diesel for transportation and power generation purposes. The nation's four oil refineries are not producing at
full capacity, hence, the demand for petroleum products is being satisfied through importation. According
to report from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria imported 4.89 billion litres of automotive gas
oil (also known as diesel) in 201618. Based on the 2016 data18 from the NBS, the market size of diesel is
not less than $1.96 billion. The market size was estimated based on landing cost of diesel. The currency
conversion rate is based on official exchange rate of 197 Naira to $1 (January to May, 2016) and 305 Naira
to $1 (June to December, 2016). The pump price of diesel in December, 2016 was 197 Naira (64 cents),
while the landing of the product was 142.82 Naira (47 cents). The pump price of diesel has actually gone up
to 249.38 Naira (82 cents) in February, 2017 according to NBS data18. The nearest market for the diesel that
would be produced from the flare gas is the oil fields flaring the gas because significant volume of diesel
is used at most oil fields. From the above analysis, it is obvious that any investment in producing diesel in
Nigeria would make huge business sense.
Methanol is used as a chemical inhibitor to prevent the formation of hydrate in subsea pipelines. In Nigeria
methanol demand by oil producing companies is high considering that there are several offshore producing
fields such Bonga, Akpo, Agbami, etc. Another emerging use for methanol in Nigeria is domestic cooking.
Despite making the list of top 15 oil producing countries, Nigeria is still a net importer of household cooking
fuel such as kerosene. According to data available on NBS website, Nigeria imported approximately 713
million litres of dual purpose kerosene in 201618. Average price for a litre of kerosene in Nigeria based on
NBS price watch is 352.42 Naira. Irrespective of this large volume of importation, there is always scarcity
of kerosene in Nigeria resulting in long queues at filling stations. Unfortunately, cooking gas is scarce
most times and its price is out of reach for most families. All these energy challenges in Nigeria have
created opportunity for methanol which is more environmentally friendly and cost effective19. Project Gaia
in partnership with Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company is working to launch a clean cooking
8 SPE-189120-MS

program with 2,500 stoves. This project would steer up demand for methanol once the stoves are available
in the country.
Ammonia is the second largest chemical manufactured in the world and the primary constituent of urea
fertilizer. Ammonia is also used as an ingredient in the production of resins, refrigerant, fibers, and pulp and
paper. Natural gas is the major ingredient for ammonia production accounting for 70-90% of the production
cost15. This is because natural gas is rich in hydrogen compared to other feedstocks and it is cheaper to
process compared to coal or crude oil. The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) estimated that 70% of
Nigerian (about 126 million people) are farmers and about 91 million hectares of arable land is available
for cultivation of crops. Though Notore and Indorama produce urea fertilizer, the demand for fertilizer in
Nigeria is still high and small-scale manufacturers could also latch on this demand to get a market share.
Infact, the world demand for nitrogen fertilizer (produced from ammonia) is projected to be 6,300,000
tonnes by 201820. The sub-Saharan Africa share of this demand, mainly from Nigeria and Ethiopia, is
projected at 5 percent (315,000 tons)20.

Capital cost
The capital cost of a mini GTL technology is generally not high given that the quantity of metal required
for fabrication and cost of fabrication is low. It was not possible to get capital cost data from technology
owners perhaps due to company data protection policy. Therefore, capital cost data for diesel production was
obtained based on general industry claim that capital cost for mini GTL is similar to that of large scale on
capacity basis. According to this claim, capital cost of a GTL-FT diesel plant is $100,000/dbc1. Moreover,
INFRA claims that their technology is cheaper, as cost of their plant is $24,000-75,000/dbc1. Incase of
methanol, the cost of large scale methanol plant is $200,000/dtc1. However, the capital cost provided in
the GasTechno datasheet of 2012 was used to estimate the capital cost of the min-GTL methanol. The
capital cost provided in the datasheet was for a $2 million mini-GTL methanol Plant consuming 200 Mscfd
of gas. In estimating the capital cost of mini-GTL methanol plant, the cost-to-capacity methodology (4)
was used and the capital cost in 2012 was adjusted for inflation21,22. The annual average cost index for
2012 and 2016 were used for cost adjustment to account for inflation. The cost indices were obtained from
Chemical Engineering Plant Cost Index (CEPCI)23. An exponential scaling factor of 0.66 was applied based
on literature information22.

where, Cost 1 is the known cost while Cost 2 is the unknown cost, Size 1 and Size 2 are the corresponding
plant sizes. Index 1 and Index 2 are average cost indices for 2012 and 2016 respectively, and R is the
exponential scaling factor.
Available data in the literature shows that N-Flex requires gas feedstock of 140 Mscfd to produce 3 ton/
day of ammonia15. Based on this information, we have scaled-up the plant size by a factor of 3.57 from 3
ton/day to 10.7 ton/day at feedstock rate of 500 Mscfd. The scale-up was done to have a balanced economic
evaluation of the three-selected flare gas monetization technologies. Since the cost of the N-Flex anhydrous
ammonia plant is not available, the cost of the plant was also estimated using (4). The known cost used in
estimating the unknown cost was obtained from published work by Energy and Environmental Research
Council (EERC), USA24.
In their work, a small scale ammonia plant of 20 ton/day was estimated to cost $20 million (including
new hydrogen production/purification)24. Table 4 shows the summary of the estimated capital cost of the
three selected mini GTL technologies. It important to emphasis that these capital costs may differ from the
vendors' capital, but the estimates presented here could serve as a guide for quick and unbiased economic
analysis of the selected GTL technologies.
SPE-189120-MS 9

Table 4—Summary of estimated capital cost

Technology GTL product type Raw gas Product Capital cost

required throughput ($Million)
(MMscfd) (ton/day)

Mini-GTL® Methanol 0.5 14.6 3.37

DFPTM M-CLASS Diesel 0.5 6.57* 5.00

N-Flex Anhydrous ammonia 0.5 10.7 12.84

*50 bbl was converted to tonnage using 832 kg/m3 as density of diesel

Economic evaluation
The economic evaluation of the three flare gas monetization technologies is based on product value and the
annual production rate. The daily feed gas rate for the three technologies is the same but the daily production
rate differs. Some components of the operating cost such as labour cost, supervision, etc. are negligible as
the technologies are modular and skid mounted. For example, GasTechno and Greyrock both indicated that
their technologies could be remotely operated. The gas feedstock is generally the largest operating cost for
mini GTL technologies10,25. The fixed capital is considered to be the cost of the mini GTL plant only as
the plant would not require several hectares of land considering that it would be skid mounted. It can be
seen from Table 5 that while the cost of producing methanol is the least, the production cost of ammonia
is far greater than cost of producing methanol and diesel, respectively. The driven factor for the product
cost is the quantity of the product produced per annum as well as the fixed capital cost of the mini GTL
plant. The capital charges, local taxes and miscellaneous cost are all tied to the fixed capital cost. The annual
production quantity of diesel is less than that of ammonia but the capital cost of ammonia is $7.84 million
higher than that of diesel hence the production price of diesel is $124.85/ton less than that of ammonia.
The final product cost would be reduced if the throughput for the product is also high to offset the annual
production cost.

Table 5—Production cost

Parameters Products
S/No Methanol Diesel Anhydrous
ammonia

1 Annual production rate (ton) 5,110 2,299.5 3,745

2 Annual gas feedstock rate(MMscfd) 175 175 175

3 Annual gas feedstock cost ($) at $1.30/mscf 227,500 227,500 227,500

4 Capital charges ($) :10% of fixed capital cost 337,000 500,000 1,284,000

5 Local taxes ($): 2% of fixed capital cost) 67,400 100,000 256,800

6 Miscellaneous ($): 1% of fixed capital cost 33,700 50,000 128,400

Annual production cost ($) = (3+4+5+6) 656,850 868,750 1,887,950

7 Product cost ($/ton): (3+4+5+6)/1 130.25 381.61 506.46

Product value
The evaluation of product value is presented in Table 6. The market price of the product is considered to
be the value of that product. The higher the market price of the product, the more valuable and profitable
would be the product provided the product cost is low compared to its market price. It is important to point
out the fact that the market price of the products is not from the same source and period. The market price
of diesel was obtained from NBS and is the December, 2016 landing cost of diesel in Nigeria18. The landing
10 SPE-189120-MS

cost which was 142.83 Naira per litre was converted to $561 per ton (at $1=305 Naira and density of diesel
= 832 kg/m3).

Table 6—Product value

Parameters Products

Methanol Diesel Anhydrous ammonia

Market price of products ($/ton) 442 561 343.8

Annual production rate (ton) 5,110 2,299.5 3,745

Annual revenue ($) 2,258,620 1,290,019.5 1,287,531

Product cost ($/ton) 128.54 377.8 504.13

Gross margin ($) 313.46 183.2 −160.33

Sources of prices: Diesel18; Methanol26; Anhydrous ammonia27

While the price of methanol obtained from Methanex is April USA prices, the ammonia market price
was average global price obtained from AMIS market monitor. This means that the price of methanol and
ammonia may be higher or lower than the prices presented here. Based on the data presented in this work,
diesel is the most valuable products in terms of market price but methanol gives the highest gross margin
because of higher annual production rate. Prospective investors in any of this mini GTL should be aware
that the market price of the product could fluctuate depending on forces of demand and supply. Therefore,
the parameter that should be carefully examined when thinking of investing in any of the technologies is
the annual production rate of the technology.

Conclusion
The MPR has created an opportunity for investors to invest in natural gas utilization to solve the perennial
gas flaring problem in Nigeria. The associated gas being flared would now be commercialized by selling
to an off-taker at proposed cost of $1.30/MMBTU. While oil fields with flaring gas volume of more than
25 MMscfd may be more attractive for power generation, there exist some flaring sites with few thousands
scfd of gas. Flare gas volume below 1 MMscfd could be profitably monetized by converting into chemicals
and transportation fuel using GTL technology. This paper has analysed three technological options for
monetizing low volume flare gas, namely Greyrock's DFP M-Class (GTL product is diesel), GasTechno's
mini-GTL (GTL product is methanol) and Proton Venture's N-Flex (GTL product is anhydrous ammonia).
The gas feedstock used for calculation was 500 Mscfd for all the technologies. Production cost and product
value were the key parameters used for economic comparison. Methanol is the product with the highest
market value based on gross margin while the market price of diesel is quite attractive, its cost of production
impacted greatly on the gross margin. The gross margin of anhydrous ammonia is negative because of low
annual production rate.

Acknowledgement
The authors wish to thank Baze University for providing the necessary facilities and enabling environment
during the research. Fleissen and Company (http://www.fleissen.com/) offered technical support that made
the reseach possible. We like to use this opportunity to say thank you to Fleissen.

Numenclature
Symbol Meaning
bpd barrel per day
dbc Daily barrel capacity
SPE-189120-MS 11

dtc Daily ton capacity

DME Dimethyl Ether
FT Fischer Tropsch
GGFR Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership
GTL Gas to Liquids
GTL-FT Gas to Liquids Fischer Tropsch
LNG Liquefied Natural Gas
MMBTU Million British Thermal Units
Mscfd Thousand Standard Cubic Feet per day
MMscfd Million Standard Cubic Feet per day
POX Partial Oxidation of methane
SMR Steam Methane Reformer
tpd tons per day

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