As the ground work for the Pearl GTL (Gas to Liquids) plant enters its second year, with the full backing of the Government of Qatar, ‘Shell in the Middle East’ meets Rob Kretzers, Project Director, and Ben Ring, Deputy Construction Manager, Pearl GTL, to look at the progress being made on site at Ras Laffan Industrial City in Qatar, where Shell’s largest equity investment anywhere in the world to date begins to rise up from the ground. Over the next 12 months the labour force will grow to 35,000-plus workers, whose permanent accommodation facilities in the Pearl Village will be ready for occupation later this year. When completed, around the end of the decade, the Pearl GTL integrated development project will produce 140,000 barrels per day of GTL products, and 120,000 barrels per day of condensate, liquefied petroleum gas and ethane. Pearl GTL will be the largest GTL plant in the world and will use a range of Shell’s proprietary and patented technology to convert natural gas into a range of GTL products... ‘Shell in the Middle East’ goes to Qatar...

Fact file The Pearl GTL plant will use...
...106,000 tonnes of steel
...504,000 cubic metres of concrete
...100,000 te of piping
...7,600 kilometres of cable
...200 million man-hours

“We are now into year two of the Pearl GTL project, and I will be moving to Qatar in October of this year and intend to hit the ground running,” says Rob Kretzers, Project Director for Pearl GTL.

“The first year of the project has been all about preparation for the construction phase, in terms of both on-the-ground site clearance and in the engineering offices scattered over the globe, and about designing the facilities and the ordering of equipment and materials. The FEED [Front End Engineering and Design] was completed some time ago, the detailing of the design is happening now in contractor offices in 10 different countries around the world, and our teams are at all these locations.

“Year two will see all of these staff coming together in Qatar, where the contractors will have onsite offices. Whilst in year one staff have been spread all over the world, now we will all be concentrated in Qatar. Until now, all of these people have been working in separate locations, producing detailed drawings and engineering plans, but now they have to make it all work on the ground, pulling together in one place as one team.

“The Pearl GTL plant is being built within an area known as Ras Laffan Industrial City [RLIC], which is the main area of activity for the processing of Qatar’s gas production. In terms of site preparation and development we have cleared and levelled the main area designated for the GTL facility itself, as well as several adjacent areas known as ‘lay-down’ areas, and the area for the Pearl Village, where our workers and staff will live.

“So as we begin year two we will start to see foundations being laid down with steel coming out of the ground and an upsurge of activity on all fronts. The site still looks flat but as we move forward during the course of the year we will see the plant literally rise up from the ground.

“Over the next 12 months the labour force will grow to over 35,000 and these workers will include civil construction workers and welders. The temporary facilities for the workers are under way and we expect the Pearl Village to be fully ready for occupation some time later this year.

“The Pearl Village will contain accommodation quarters, restaurants, sports facilities, a green area, shops, medical facilities, banks, an outdoor cinema and Internet cafés. It will have its own mayor, who will be responsible for the security and well-being of the community, and each of the 10 main contractors will have their own staff compounds. There will be areas where people can come together from the different contractor compounds to meet friends and socialise. The mayor will also have overall responsibility for the communal facilities.

“Shell will be placing a great deal of focus on the health and social issues of the workforce in the village and will be providing full support to staff to look after any problems which may arise. There is a considerable amount of other development going on in RLIC and there will also be some 100,000 workers housed in other accommodation villages in the area.

“The logistics of moving part of our large workforce every day from the Pearl Village to the plant site, around six kilometres away, is just one of the many challenges facing the team and requires a major transport and logistics operation.

“Health, Safety, Security and Environmental [HSSE] issues are a major concern, and Shell will be doing everything possible to ensure that ‘No harm’ comes to anyone during the life of this project.

“We are investing an enormous amount of time and effort in training workers and their trainers, and a substantial training centre is under construction in the Pearl Village. However, HSSE policies and procedures will only work if they are simple to understand and people are prepared to put them into practice on the ground and stick to them.

“So, all in all, this is an absolutely fantastic project and I am very excited about the future. I am also looking forward to working with the many thousands of people who will be coming here over the next few years, from many parts of the world,” concludes Rob.

Ben Ring, Deputy Construction Manager for Pearl GTL, says, “Site preparation work has been under way since 2006.

“The actual area of the site being prepared for the Pearl GTL plant itself is 1.5 kilometres by 1.6 kilometres. However, there are further areas being prepared adjacent to the site of the GTL plant which are called ‘lay-down’ facilities. These are for the storage and preparation of the materials and equipment which will be used to prepare and build the plant and which are also being used by the various contractors to set up temporary office facilities and clinics providing varying levels of medical treatment.

“In addition, Shell has developed a materials off-loading facility at Ras Laffan Port for the handling of heavy materials as there was not enough capacity in the port for the expected freight volume. This has led to Shell contracting for the construction of a 250-metre-long jetty, a Ro-Ro [roll-on roll-off] jetty, as well as for the development of an aggregates berth.

“The main reason that Shell wished to establish this facility was that the next nearest unloading facility was at Qatar’s main port in Doha. This would have meant that a large proportion of the materials and equipment, from cement to steel and from pipework to the plant’s larger equipment, would have had to be shipped overland from Doha to Ras Laffan, or from further afield.

“By building this new facility we estimate that we have reduced the need for some 200,000 lorry journeys. As the distance from Doha Port to Ras Laffan is some 90 kilometres each way, the new materials off-loading facility will save many millions of kilometres of road journeys over the course of the development of the project.

“This will considerably reduce the wear and tear and congestion on the country’s road system, reduce the potential dangers from road traffic accidents and at the same time bring about a reduction in vehicle emissions, thereby reducing our environmental impact.

“To house the workers who will build the Pearl GTL plant, Shell has contracted for the construction of a dedicated 170-hectare village with all the amenities required to provide the best possible living environment for the workers. Shell’s Peter Zacher has been taking the lead on both the material off-loading facility and the Pearl Village, and David Mansour is taking the lead on the associated infrastructure.”

Ben goes on to explain, “Work on the preparation of the main site has begun and we have levelled the ground and so far removed some two million cubic metres of materials, sand and rocks, which have been deposited on the south lay-down area. Some of the rock on the ground has been too hard for mechanical excavation and we have had to carry out blasting operations five times a week, removing 50,000 cubic metres of rock per week.

“At the south lay-down area we have rock crushers and have been grading the materials which will be used later on in the development of the site as infill materials and for the stabilisation of roads. There are also certain areas of the site which will have to be raised by as much as one or two metres. So much of the material which we have removed to date will find its way back on to the site to be used over the next year or so, and by the end of the project we will have used all the material that we have removed.

“As well as carrying out earthworks, the early works contractors are installing the basic site facilities such as potable water, an electrical power distribution system and fencing.

“To make sure that communications are available, we have telecommunications operators on site installing the necessary cabling and communications facilities for telephones and Internet access. We also have the main contractors establishing office facilities, clinics and their prefabrication facilities.

“Some of the initial foundation work has begun and we already have in place a batching plant which will make some 600,000 cubic metres of concrete during the construction period of the plant. Shell’s Alejandro De Jong is overseeing the early works on the main site.

“So at the moment the initial site preparation is well under way and the main contractors will begin work on their own site preparation, establishing the correct ground levels and preparing to put in foundations.”

Moving on to matters of HSE. Ben says, “We have just passed a major milestone of five million man-hours with no LTIs [Lost Time Incidents]. HSE is an ongoing challenge and one which we will have to deal with until the very last day when we de-mobilise.

“As the construction boom continues around the world, we find that the proportion of experienced workers on site is getting lower and lower. As a result of this, the level of induction and HSE training which we are required to provide is much higher than in the past.

“This also means that the level of supervision on site has to be much higher and we need to have more HSE co-ordinators on site. To ensure that we can meet these goals, Shell is providing a training facility within the Pearl Village where the main contractors will be encouraged to provide various training programmes for their staff, with the main focus being on HSE issues.

“We will also be using something known as TSTI [Total Safety Task Instruction], where before each activity the relevant members of the workforce involved in that particular activity are collected together to discuss the job, to highlight potential risks and to ensure that workers have the right tools for the right jobs and are wearing the appropriate safety equipment.

“The site will have its own ambulance and staff will be available to provide first aid. Serious cases will be treated at the Ras Laffan Clinic, whilst more serious medical cases will be taken to Al Khor, where there is a substantial hospital with excellent medical facilities, located some 30 kilometres away.

“One of the biggest challenges we are going to have to face is how we can drive a single culture of care and concern to have an incident-free and injury-free project when we have so many people from different countries with different languages involved in the project. One of the things we will be focusing on is to make sure that individual groups of people working on a single job will have a common language to ensure that there are no failures in communications.

“So,” says Ben, “this last year has been a very exciting one and whilst it is difficult to fully describe the amount of work which has been carried out on site, a tremendous amount of progress has, in fact, been made.

“We have hit some important milestones. The heavy lift berth is complete, the site has been handed over to the implementation contractors who have all started work, and we have started to move into our new camp.

“As the implementation contractors begin to ramp up their manpower, the next 12 months is going to be even more remarkable, with an enormous difference taking place here,” Ben concludes.