MAPUTO, April 25 (Reuters) – South African state-owned oil
company PetroSA is in talks with Mozambique to develop a
gas-to-liquids (GTL) plant to feed growing demand for diesel in
the country and region, a senior official said on Wednesday.
Gareth Shaw, PetroSA’s business development manager for GTL,
said his company was proposing the building of a 40,000
barrels-per-day plant at a cost of around $4 billion.
The plant could feed a growing need for fuels, and diesel in
particular, in the southern African region.
Shaw said the plant could use PetroSA’s new low-temperature
Fischer-Tropsch technology, which would boost the share of
diesel produced in the plant to 70 percent from 40 percent seen
in other types of GTL technology.
“The industrial growth Mozambique is experiencing is driving
diesel consumption in this area,” Shaw told a mining and energy
conference in Maputo.
Mozambique is a net importer of fuel, with some 900,000
tonnes of fuel products brought into the country each year, the
national fuels director has said.
Consortia led by U.S. oil and gas producer Anadarko
Petroleum and Italy’s Eni have made huge gas
discoveries in Mozambique’s Rovuma offshore basin.
The country’s total recoverable resources are seen at more
than 100 trillion cubic feet, industry officials and analysts
h a ve said.
While producers are first likely to build liquefied natural
gas plants in Mozambique, and some have already announced plans
to do so, Shaw said there was scope for a GTL plant after that.
(Reporting by Agnieszka Flak; Editing by Jon Herskovitz and
Mark Potter)
© Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved
