The world's largest plant to turn natural gas into cleaner-burning fuels and lubricants took a major step closer to production today when gas began flowing from a giant offshore field. 

Pearl GTL will process around 3 billion barrels of oil equivalent over its lifetime from the world's largest single gas field, the North Field in the Arabian Gulf. The field stretches from Qatar's coast and contains more than 900 trillion cubic feet of gas, equivalent to 150 billion barrels of oil, or over 10% of worldwide gas resources.