ORYX GTL PLANT PRODUCING AND ON TARGET FOR FIRST SHIPMENT

The ORYX GTL plant is now producing intermediate product and only the product work-up unit now remains to be tested. The first shipment will be ready for market in the last week of March.

Speaking at the GTLtec conference in Doha, Qatar on Monday, Chris Turner, General Manager of ORYX GTL said that, subject to current levels of progress being maintained, the plant will achieve this milestone in the first quarter of 2007 as previously announced.

He said:

“The FT technology has produced intermediate product and has proved itself. Overall the start-up is progressing smoothly, though, as we expected, it has not been without its challenges. This goes with the territory however, and I’m very pleased with the plant and very pleased with the team. Barring the unexpected, we expect to achieve the first quarter target we set ourselves.”

ORYX GTL was inaugurated in June 2006 and since then has been subject to a progressive start-up process.

Chris Turner said:

“As is typical of plants of this scale anywhere in the world, we have followed a detailed, sequential start-up process.. There is no magic switch that gets flicked to start 34,000 barrels of product per day flowing.

Each of our systems has to be started sequentially and, once they are running successfully, you can move on to the next one. The process takes time and you can’t cut corners.

The plant was completed within budget . While start-up has taken a couple of months longer than we anticipated, that’s not much on a pioneering and complex project like ORYX GTL.

The message today is that ORYX GTL works and is on track to be the highly successful pioneer for a global industry that we always said it would be. That’s good news for Qatar and its good news for the GTL industry as a whole.”