Qatar Oil Industry
Thursday, 4th August 2005 by Alex Turnbull
Check out this port in Qatar. Shake says:
Is that an oil spill in the water? Because it looks like that tanker is capsizing and some other small boats are trying to push it back.
We weren't sure however. Could it not be that the tugs are just moving the tanker into place, and that the swirls in the water are formed by sediment being thrown up? Regardless, it's a cool image.
A little further west is this burning thing, and along the coast a little is this really cool spout of water emptying into the sea. Can someone explain these sights?
Many thanks to Shake, Stephane and Todd Day.
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
I really dig the natural gas tanker with the 5 big domes sitting there too.
The water is probably just for cooling. Here is what looks to be a water intake. The pipe line can be traced to the facility where the water output originates from.
And the discoloration of the water may also be airbubbles from the cavatation of the water by the tug boat props, but that’s total speculation.
My take is that the discoloration may be from the tub probs churning up silt on the bottom of the harbor.
I don’t think the ship is capsizing, just getting pushed up to the dock.
Ditto, Steve. Those tugs need a lot of thrust to push large vessels. Not to mention that the dock configuration probably makes it easier to push the tanker to the loading site rather than backing the tanker in under it’s own power.
I’d assume the burning thing is a gas flame, like they have at gas wells? Although I couldn’t tell what it is doing here in a port.
My take would be a possible desalinazation plant. I know that Qatar is trying to expand their water supply? Any body got another idea?
The burning thing may be a natural gas flare.
There’s more water flows to the south of the ship terminal.
It’s not capsizing, we’d see part of one of its sides if it were tilting.
The efflugent also does not act at all like what oil would do on the water. (The “leaky tanker” from last week is more like it.) It’s probably silt kicked up by the movement of the tanker.
This is an LNG complex – http://www.qatargas.com.qa/corporate-profile/onshore.htm
Maybe check this interesting page with video footage of the whole industrial site there. I suspect that water spot there to be the cooling water used for air conditioning or the huge gas storage tanks, as on the virtual map of that site the pipes seem to go only from the gas tanks towards the see. Well, check it out: http://www.raslaffan.com.qa/rlc/index.html
I think the boat is beeing pushed in to the dock, the waterpipe is just for cooling and the flame is burning oil/feul steam from the pomp mechanism on the dock… you often see those flames at oil refinerys…
U agree?
I work at the site.
It’s the berth for Qatargas and Rasgas which are LNG production plants. The ship you are looking at is one of RaGas’ ships which is a membrane type ship which is being assisted by tugs (churning up some mud) to berth before loading being loaded with LNG destined for Korea. If you zoom out a bit you will see another ship already at the berth and this is one of Qatargas’ MOSS type ship because you can see 5 spheres on it, its’ also being loaded and is probably on it’s way to Japan.
The second picture is the cooling water discharge for the Qatargas plant, which is water cooled. Qatar is a fairly flat country and we often joke that this is the largest waterfall in the country.
There are two flares at the jetty one for each berth for the flare gas while loading and there are three major flares at the plant site itself.
cheers
This docking facility is at the RASGAS facility in Qatar. The ship (not boat) is not sinking and is being pushed into the dock by the tugs who are just churning up the silt.
Also, the water churn is from the cooling facility….zoom up coast a little bit and you will see the intake site.
Yep, this is definitely a Liquified Natural Gas station. The ship on the bottom left is a carrier of LNG.
Mohamed, what companies run that plant? I work for Shell and was wondering if that was one of our stations that we have a partnership in.
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