Sasol awards Technip FEED contract for GTL project
Published 8:40 am Monday, November 25, 2013
For the third time this year, a Paris-based firm has won a major engineering and design contract with a local petrochemical company.
Sasol officials announced Monday that Technip has been awarded the front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the company’s gas-to-liquids complex. Last month, Sasol awarded Technip a FEED contract to supply proprietary ethylene technology for their proposed ethane cracker facility.
In July, Fluor Corp., an engineering firm based in Irving, Texas, was awarded Sasol’s main FEED contract for the ethane cracker project.
Technip was also awarded a FEED contract in August for Trunkline LNG’s proposed expansion on Big Lake Road in Lake Charles.
In a statement to the American Press, Johan du Preez, Sasol’s executive vice president of U.S. megaprojects, said Technip’s award is “a milestone” for the GTL project.
“With experience as the execution contractor for our ORYX GTL plant in Qatar, and the primary FEED contractor for our proposed GTL plant in Uzbekistan, Technip has the expertise to help us deliver this first-of-its-kind project for the United States,” his statement read.
Sasol’s GTL complex is expected to produce more than 96,000 barrels of diesel fuels and chemicals each day. The complex will feature a synthesis reactor that will link natural gas’s single carbon methane molecule into long-chain molecules. The chain is then put through a refining process that converts the natural gas into diesel fuel, naphtha, paraffin waxes, lubricating oils and liquid propane gases.
The complex will also house Sasol’s second linear alkyl benzene unit, which will increase the company’s production of detergent alkylates. Sasol’s LAB units convert paraffin steam into linear alkyl benzene, a compound used as a surfactant in laundry detergent.
The GTL project’s estimated cost is between $11-14 billion.
Sasol officials hope to conclude the FEED phase and reach final investment decision on the GTL project in 2016. Construction on the complex is expected to begin in 2016 and end in 2020.
