Sasol Expects to Beat Design Capacity at Oryx GTL

2 July 2008

Reuters. Sasol expects actual output to exceed the design capacity at the Oryx gas-to-liquids (GTL) joint venture plant in Qatar. The plant is designed to produce 34,000 barrels per day of liquid hydrocarbons (primarily synthetic diesel) from about 330-million cubic feet per day of natural gas from Qatar’s North Field in the Persian Gulf. (Earlier post.)

“We’ve gone beyond ramp-up and are in the optimisation phase,” Group General Manager Lean Strauss said on the sidelines of the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid.

Oryx, the world’s biggest GTL plant, which produces both ultra low sulphur diesel and naphtha, had average daily output for the six months of 2008 of 9,000 barrels per day (bpd).

Sasol has a number of other new GTL and CTL projects in the works, including:

• Escravos GTL in Nigeria, which has suffered from cost overruns and delays, and is now scheduled for completion in 2011.

• CTL plants in the US, India and China. The most advanced projects are in China, where feasibility studies were expected to be completed in 2009, with start-up in 2015 or 2016.

• The CTL Project Mafutha study in South Africa is still in the pre-feasibility phase.