Sasol Vows No New CTL or GTL Plants
South African energy and chemicals group Sasol is not planning to construct any new gas-to-liquids (GTL) or coal-to-liquids (CTL) facilities of its own.
Sasol joint CEO Stephen Cornell confirmed this during the opening ceremony at a new Sasol mine, which is part of a rand 14bn ($1.05bn) programme to secure replacement coal feedstock until 2050. The company, which pioneered both technologies, had already said late 2017 it would not build another Sasol GTL unit.
The Shondoni mine, officially opened July 5 by mining minister Gwede Mantashe, is one of three new mines to boost supplies of coal to the Sasol plant at Sasol’s large Secunda CTL unit. Shondoni replaces Sasol Mining's Middelbult Colliery, which has reached the end of its lifespan, and the coal mined there will be transported along a 21km conveyor to Secunda.
Sasol spokesman Alex Anderson told NGW that Sasol envisages that there will be no further coal-to-liquids (CTL) plants after Secunda, which will be kept running.
Cornell signaled July 5 that he also does not envisage that Sasol will invest in another GTL plant. But Anderson said that Sasol remains willing to licence its technology "for third parties," something it is doing in Uzbekistan.
Two large-scale GTL projects were projected next decade by a US EIA survey: a 37,600 b/d GTL plant in Uzbekistan in 2021 and conversion of the 160,000 b/d Secunda CTL unit to a GTL plant in South Africa in 2025; the latter now appears to have been shelved.
Sasol is involved in gas exploration, development and production in Mozambique, from where it pipes gas to its Sasolburg GTL facility, an adjacent gas-fired power plant; and also to South African industries who buy the gas from Sasol. However Mozambique's government chose Shell, rather than Sasol, to build a future GTL unit there; Shell and Maputo had been discussing such a project since 2014.
South Africa's energy minister Jeff Radebe is working on a new strategy for the country's energy mix, as well as a new gas blueprint. He has already indicated that he sees natural gas as an indispensable part of the future energy equation, as a feedstock for power plants and for wider industrial use.
Radebe has held talks with his counterparts in neighbouring countries on possible supplies, including from the Rovuma basin offshore Mozambique. One option that appeals to South African politicians is to expand an existing gas pipeline into South Africa from southern Mozambique much further north. However, there’s no indication that developers of the gas offshore northern Mozambique, which include ExxonMobil, Eni and Anadarko and the government in Maputo believe in the pipeline option’s commercial viability.