The Center is conceived to conduct research and development in areas pertinent to the consortium members.
The overall objective of the Center is to be the focal point for generating, maintaining and disseminating information and technology related to Qatar’s gas processing industrial base, accomplished through the range of services the Center will offer. This will create an in-country technical repository and applied research capability that will complement the technologies and technical services provided by the multinational partners of Qatar’s National Companies. This will, over time, assure that Qatar has its own, locally sited and controlled source of knowledge and technology to operate, maintain and enhance its industrial facilities – the Qatarization of knowledge and technology.
The two themes that will form the initial focus of the Center are:
- Asset Management addresses the ongoing operating, maintenance, troubleshooting and process improvement challenges that Qatar industry will face over time. The need will be to achieve high reliability, reduce costs, debottleneck, reduce emissions and enhance existing facilities through incremental investment to meet market demands for products.
- Sustainable Development theme addresses the need for Qatari industry to operate these assets in an environmentally sustainable manner. Facilities of the magnitude and scale of those located in Qatar inevitably create environmental challenges. These include such issues as air emissions (NOx, SOx, CO, CO2, and ozone), water emissions (chlorine in sea water), sulfur byproduct from gas production and byproduct water generated in certain gas processing facilities.
These problems are common to multiple companies and their solution will benefit a wide cross section of industry. The long term objective will be to achieve sustainable development of Qatar’s vast natural gas and hydrocarbon resources.