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| June 2006 |
Feature |
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By Dr Garth Cambray
On June 6 2006 fuel history went almost full circle. In wartime 1940's Germany, the technology to turn coal to liquid fuel was invented. At the end of the war, development of oil sources in the Arabian gulf made it uneconomically viable to continue the coal to liquids process. South Africa, an oil poor country proved a good testing ground for coal to liquids technology as fuel sanctions denied this country access to cheap global crude oil. See the related article on the history of SASOL to see how this company's technology developed. In the current world market, crude oil is not able to keep up with global energy demands, so once again, the technology to convert coal to oil is profitable. But, more importantly, in the past 50 years, SASOL have proven the technology and developed methods of modifying it to convert natural gas to liquid fuel. So, crude oil from the gulf, which made Fischer-Tropsch technology for synthetic fuel production unviable in the 1950's, has now become so scarce, and hence profitable, that oil producing countries have surplus profits to invest in setting up facilities to add value to their natural gas reserves by producing liquid fuels for the global market using SASOL Fischer Tropsch technologies. Qatar, has, in the form of the North Gas Field, the single largest gas field in the world containing as much as 25.5 trillion cubic meters of natural gas. In 2003, the Qatar state owned fuel company, Qatar Petroleum, and SASOL began the construction of the Oryx gas to liquids plant in Ras-Laffan. Just shy of a billion US$, the plant was a major statement of faith in the growth of global fuel demand. Nearly three years later and the demand for fuel has most probably outperformed even our wildest fantasies. The current plant has an output of 34 000 barrels per day, and plans are already underway to expand that by another 100 000 barrels per day. Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Qatar since 1995, has seen oil prices rise nearly 5 fold since he became emir, and has expressed his ambition to see Qatar become the worlds GTL leader. Sasol CEO Pat Davies stressed at the opening of the Oryx plant that this facility was the largest of its type in the world. It appears that the partnership between Qatar Petroleum and SASOL will most definitely bring the ambitions of Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani into reality. Fuels produced by the Oryx plant will be marketed by Sasol Chevron, a 50% joint venture between Sasol and Chevron Corporation of the US. More information:
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