Global Targets for Sasol's Multi Project $3.4 Billion Capex Plans

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Announcing a 13% increase to $6.1 billion in revenue over last year's figures Sasol (JSE:SOLJ, NASDAQ:SASOY) (Johannesburg, South Africa) this week indicated that it planned to upgrade its listing from NASDAQ to the main board of the NYSE next year as over 50% of its turnover came from offshore its domestic base in South Africa. Operating profit for the year was $1.5 billion.

With $3.4 billion currently committed to capital projects Sasol is at the planning and implementation stage with a number of projects including a major new gas-to-liquids joint venture in Qatar. If the new project goes ahead it will be in addition to Sasol's established $8 billion joint venture with Qatar Petroleum, which is expected to start production in 2005.

Sasol has signed a partnership agreement for the project with Chevron-Texaco (NYSE;CHV) (San Francisco, California), who is helping to develop a $12 billion gas to liquids plant at Escravos in Nigeria which is part of Sasol's plan to be producing 500,000 bpd of GTL sourced diesel by 2013. This is equivalent to the output of four Secundas, Sasol's synthetic fuels plant in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. The new plants will make use of second generation Sasol Slurry Phase Distillate (SPD) process GTL technology.

The Qatar plant will produce 34,000 bpd, which could be upped to 100,000 bpd by building on additional plant. The same pattern could be followed at the Nigerian facilities. Chevron-Texaco could also acquire a share in the Qatar operation where the team may get involved in the extraction of gas in addition to the processing plants.

Sasol is hoping to hear from the Australian government during the next six months concerning the company's plans to establish a GTL plant in the country and is also taking an exploratory look at prospects in Iran.

Total project Investments under 'current key projects' is: n-Butanol plant $116 million; Acrylic acids and acrylates plant $178.5 million; Mozambique natural gas project - natural gas field $23.8 million - central processing facility $20.4 million - transmission pipeline $55 million - Sasolburg conversion $125 million (the marketing of Mozambique gas to new South African customers is well advanced); GTL plants IN Nigeria and Qatar $210 million.

Ethanol production capacity at Herene in Germany was almost doubled during the year. Construction remains on schedule for the commissioning of a world scale plant to produce 150,000 tons per annum (tpa) of n-butanol and 15,000 tpa of iso-butanol before the end of 2002. The associated complex for the production of acrylic acid an acrylates is scheduled to start beneficial operation towards the end of 2003.

The company's olefins and surfactants division is acquiring 100% of the shareholding in Condea Nanjing Chemical Co (China) including the 30% previously held by the Nanjing Surfactants factory. Condea became Sasol Chemie when it was purchased in 2000.

Sasol currently has proven and probable hydrocarbon fuel reserves of 400 million barrels oil equivalent, which include its interest in Gabon's Etame field where the first oil has just been produced.

The international commercialization of Sasol's GTL technology to produce cleaner burning fuels from natural gas will play a major role in Sasol's future international and the consumption globally of low-emission fuels expansion.

Find out more information about Sasol's projects as part of Industrialinfo.com's International Industrial Database