The performance of a commercially-available sour shift catalyst (SSC1) under selected syngas compositions was investigated and kinetic parameters were obtained. The watergas shift experiments were carried out in a differential reactor using simulated syngases containing a constant level of H 2S concentration of 1000 ppm on a wet basis at 450 °C and atmospheric pressure. The following kinetic relationship has subsequently been developed to describe the performance of catalyst SSC1 at a reaction temperature of 450 °C (723 K) and atmospheric pressure using a power–law model: R = 0.008 ± 0.0004 exp ( − 60.3 ± 1.3 R ′ T ) P CO 0.75 ± 0.12 P H 2 O 0.31 ± 0.08 P CO 2 − 0.07 ± 0.02 P H 2 − 0.09 ± 0.02 ( 1 − 1 K ⋅ P CO 2 P H 2 P CO P H 2 O ) The effect of varying H 2S concentration on the performance of the sour shift catalyst was investigated using simulated dry-feed coal-derived syngas. It was found that its reactivity is significantly improved by the presence of sulfur. The reaction order with respect to H 2S concentration in the feed gas was calculated to be 0.52 ± 0.02 for a wide range of H 2S concentrations (330–2670 ppm). The activity of the sour shift catalyst is very poor compared to those of commercial high-temperature water–gas shift catalysts when the concentration of H 2S in the syngas is lower than 500 ppm. It was found that the sour shift catalyst has an advantage over the high-temperature catalysts tested in this study only if the H 2S concentration in the coal-derived syngas is consistently maintained at levels greater than 1000 ppm on a wet basis.