SASOL’s unique feedstocks and technology would make its $11bn Lake Charles Chemicals Project more competitive than other petrochemicals complexes in North America, Fleetwood Grobler, executive vice-president of Sasol’s chemicals business, said on Thursday.The project, which consists of an ethane cracker producing 1.5-million tonnes of ethylene a year and six derivatives chemicals units, is one of the largest foreign investments made by a South African company. Its first products will come on stream in 2018, within a few years of several other new ethane crackers in North America that will use cheap and abundant shale gas.Sasol said in July the costs of the project had escalated from a previous estimate of $8.9bn because of bad weather during construction and unexpected additional costs associated with site preparation. This had cut the expected returns from the project, although they remained above the dollar-weighted average cost of capital of about 8%.Joint CEO Steve Cornell said ...
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