The three plants, which will augment the company’s five current gas separation plants, will be designed to handle, in total, some 500 million cubic feet per day of natural gas.
In a statement PTT Plc President Prasert Bunsumpun said, “The three plants [will] be built one-by-one, with construction linked to demand from the petrochemical industry. PTT’s policy is to separate all gas fed into the third pipeline to increase additional value.”
“That is the incentive, to build more gas-separation plants. As the market is to expand, it is worthwhile to put more money into such construction,” he added.
Prasert acknowledged the other aspect of having this sort of asset, boosting the demand for raw material production for the country’s petrochemical industry whilst supplying the by-products from the separation process to the petrochemical facilities.
Such a move, he admitted, was the result of past lessons learned.
According to Prasert, “The transmission of gas through Thailand’s first two transmission pipelines, located in the Gulf of Thailand, led to missed opportunities.”
“Whilst 2,700 million cubic feet of gas is fed into the pipelines each day, only 1,100 million cubic feet is sent to separation plants. All remaining gas is fed straight to power plants, which results in missed opportunities to make additional revenue from the remaining gas,” he added.
