(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-12-17 11:26

With global oil prices now lingering near historical highs, it is likely that China's first coal-to-liquid (CTL) project will begin operation before the previously projected date of 2016, according to South Africa's Sasol, the world pioneer in commercial CTL technology. It is planning two giant projects in China.

"Once we have completed our studies, we will consider shortening the period (before operations begin)," says Lean Strauss, Sasol Group general manager. "We will bring the date forward."

He didn't give a new timetable, but the company's Beijing office said earlier the two projects might come online in 2013.

The company and its Chinese partner China Shenhua Group are now in the second phase of feasibility studies for the two projects, one in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province and the other in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Sasol began planning with Shenhua Group Co Ltd and Shenhua Ningxia Coal Ltd for the projects in 2004 and preliminary studies were finished at the end of 2005. According to earlier reports, the studies now underway will determine details of capital and feedstock costs, water supplies and market conditions, and will outline most of the major commercial and funding issues.

"China has the right conditions to become the second country in the world to develop CTL," Strauss says. Sasol commercialized CTL projects in its home country after building its first plant in 1955 and two more from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. Twenty-five percent of South African fuel is now derived from coal to power cars and airlines in the country.

"South Africa flies and drives on coal," Strauss says proudly.

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