London — Turkmenistan inaugurated on Friday what is billed as the world's first gas-to-gasoline plant, set to turn some of the country's vast gas supply into around 15,500 b/d of motor fuel, primarily for the domestic market.

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The plant outside the capital Ashgabat was built by Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Turkish company Ronesans, and uses technology from Danish catalysis company Haldor Topsoe.

The latter, which participated in Qatar's Oryx gas-to-liquids project, hopes to see the technology in Turkmenistan adopted elsewhere. Previous gas-to-liquids projects around the world have mostly been oriented to diesel production.

The gasoline "complies with the highest environmental standards, contains no sulfur and very little unwanted byproducts," Haldor Topsoe said in a statement.

The plant is expected to use 1.8 billion cubic meters/year of gas and produce 92 octane gasoline, without additional processing. Turkmen official media reports previously put the price tag at $1.7 billion.

A number of gas-to-liquids projects have been mooted in Central Asia, including in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Turkmenistan is thought to hold the world's fourth-largest gas reserves and is a big supplier by pipeline to China. But it has struggled to diversify its customer base for gas, with some quantities periodically going to Iran and Russia.

Periodic fuel shortages remain common across much of ex-Soviet Central Asia, although Turkmenistan exports some liquid fuel from its two refineries, including to southern neighbor Afghanistan.

Haldor Topsoe said the startup of the Turkmen plant, with a ribbon cutting ceremony involving President Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov, had proceeded to plan.

"During the coming months, the performance test run is expected to be completed. At full capacity the plant will produce 15,500 b/d of gasoline," it said.

Gasoline should account for 85% of the product stream, the rest being LPG, it added.

The project "sets a new world standard for monetizing gas resources in a very effective way," CEO Bjerne Clausen said.

-- Nick Coleman, nick.coleman@spglobal.com

-- Edited by James Burgess, newsdesk@spglobal.com