SYRIA - The Palmyra Plant.

The second largest in the country, the treatment and processing plant in Palmyra region has a design capacity of 7.5 MCM/d of raw gas. Its expansion to this capacity was completed in late 1999 as part of the second phase in the development of five non-associated gas fields in the area.

The fields are: Arak, Hail and Dubayat, which contain sweet gas and were put on stream through 1996 for the plant's first phase; and Najib and Sokhne which have sour gas and came on stream in early 2000 (see profiles of Syria's gas fields in Gas Market Trends).

The plant's first phase, consisting of units to process both sweet and sour gases, came on stream in late 1996 with total capacity of 4.5 MCM/d However, it could only operate at the rate of about 3 MCM/d, which was the capacity of Arak, Hail and Dubayat fields. Clean gas from the plant has since supplied the Zaizoun power station in central Syria near Idlib, which has a capacity of 384 MW, through a 120-km pipeline.

Phase-II plant, adjacent to Phase-1, has units which were completed in late 1999 and came on stream in early 2000. The plant is processing the gas from the Najib and Sokhne fields. Its capacity is 3 MCM/d. A 150-km pipeline has been built to carry clean gas the Aleppo power station whose first three 200 MW units started up in early 2000. The station's other two 200 MW units were completed in 2002/03, when a 250-km pipeline from the plant was expanded.

The five Palmyra fields are linked to two major pipelines completed in early 2002: the one carrying gas to the power station in Aleppo, and the other to a line with a larger pipe carrying gas from the Omar field and processing facilities to the 400 MW Tishreen power station just south of Damascus. The latter pipeline came on stream in August 1992. Now the line also reaches the 630 MW Mhardeh power plant (on the Mediterranean coast north-west of Hama) and the 680 MW Banias power station, refinery and terminal centre.

Through these new pipelines, the fields have helped increase gas supplies to the power sector and industries. They will enable the power plants to be expanded further in the coming years.