Doha, 22 January –Marc Gené’s trip around Qatar continued today with a visit to the industrial city of Ras Laffan, home to the biggest GTL extraction plant in the world, run by Shell along with Qatar Petroleum. The Ras Laffan plant, known as Pearl GTL, is 80 kilometres to the north of Doha and covers an area of around 250 hectares; the same size as Hyde Park in London.

The facility is home to all the offshore extraction processes and onshore treatment used in the production of hydrocarbons from the single biggest natural gas field in the world, which stretches from the coast of Qatar to the Persian Gulf. When at full capacity, the plant, built by the partnership of Shell and Qatar Petroleum, will have a production capacity of 140,000 barrels per day of GTL products (from gas to liquid,) these being diesel oil, nafta, kerosene, paraffin and base products for lubricants, as well as 120,000 barrels per day of natural liquid gas and ethane.

This was definitely an unusual experience for Marc: “It’s impressive: over 13,000 kilometres of piping used to deliver products that are the basis of so many things we use in our daily lives,” said the Spanish driver. “It was very informative for me to get the chance to visit this facility to try and get an idea of how much technology goes into the products that Shell provides us with, both in every day life for our road cars and for racing.”

Yesterday, the driver, who works for Scuderia Ferrari on racing and promotional activities drove in the first ever Formula 1 demonstration run in the Gulf states, following on from a parade of over twenty five road-going Ferraris, which shows how popular the Maranello built cars are in this part of the world: in fact a Ferrari California opened the course before Marc did his show run. For over a decade, Ferrari has been represented in Qatar by the Al Fardan Group, a major company operating in the luxury goods market. Qatar is one of the most dynamic areas in the Middle East: in 2011 Ferrari witnessed a 15% growth in business here and that trend is due to continue in a market with the highest personalisation rate in the region.