A quarter of Sasol’s 30,000 employees work in coal mines. They extract the lumps that yield 165,000 barrels of liquid fuels a day, from high-octane airplane petrol to superclean diesel for cars, at Sasol’s big Secunda plant, 80 kms southeast of Johannesburg. It has four domestic competitors; one is state-owned PetroSA (which, using Sasol technology, turns out 45,000 barrels a day from coal).
South Africa’s response to its lack of oil contrasts with that of other similarly disadvantaged modern economies. Japan, which in the 1940s sent soldiers off to conquer oilfields in the then Dutch East Indies, took a notoriously more acquisitive bent. But coal-to-fuels magic was out for Japan–no coal. Later, and more peaceably, the Japanese went in big for nuclear power. Italy has coal in Sardinia, but it lacks the technological base to do the Sasol trick. And, of course, Italy lies conveniently close to foreign oilfields in Algeria, Libya and the Mideast. As a function of Italy’s search for a reliable source of oil, AGIP, a division of ENI, is now a major global petroleum company.
After decades of fuel technology research in South Africa, Sasol was born in 1950 with a mandate from the newly in-charge white supremacist National Party to find ways for fuel self-sufficiency. Development was spurred when, in the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa took on a pariah status that apartheid added to its geographical isolation: It was to manufacture fuels and chemicals from “indigenous raw materials,” i.e., coal. The trick was of course to transform coal into fuel so that the rogue regime could run its cars. Sasol’s coal-to-fuels technology is based on the Fischer-Tropsch process, a method, it happens, brought to full flower in oil-starved Nazi Germany.
From the outset chemical applications oozed out of the transformation process. These were relatively unsophisticated at the start, but South African boffins soon developed a range of more elegant products–among them explosives, a nice fit for the mining industry. One recent chemicals initiative is Sasol Alpha Olefins, which makes octene, used in detergents, and hexene, used in cellophane. Sasol also turns out polypropylene, ammonias, PVC–over 200 fuel and chemical products in all.
Globally welcome, today’s racially mixed South Africa still needs liquid fuels and chemicals. Sasol exists well with the African National Congress. “I give the government every credit for sensible economic policy,” says Pieter Cox. “This country, despite some obvious, well-publicized difficulties, is sustaining its growth [current real GDP growth: 3%]. We are seeing the emergence of an enormous black middle class. The nature of consumption is changing. Our economy has success stories. Sasol is one of them.”
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