Sasol

Two more chemical units have ramped up at Sasol Ltd.’s massive ethane cracker complex underway in Lake Charles, LA, putting the Integrated chemicals and energy giant in sight of completion before the end of the year. The world-scale Lake Charles Chemicals Project (LCCP), a petrochemicals facility adjacent to an existing Sasol site, is designed to…

A multi-billion dollar natural gas-to-liquids (GTL) project underway near Lake Charles, LA, since 2012 by Sasol Ltd. has been scuttled.

South Africa-based Sasol has reevaluated its Lake Charles Chemicals Project (LCCP) in Louisiana and determined that the 1.5 million tonne per annum ethane cracker and six associated downstream chemical facilities are running behind schedule and over budget.

The petrochemical industry in the United States is poised for a “spectacular comeback,” thanks to an abundant supply of feedstock from shale reserves, industry analysts with GlobalData said Monday.

Although it recently dropped out of a Western Canada gas-to-liquids (GTL) project with Sasol Canada (see Shale Daily, June 29), Talisman Energy Inc. still foresees monetizing its Montney Shale reserves through “some form of conversion process,” CEO John Manzoni told financial analysts during an earnings conference call. Manzoni said the Montney resource is “big enough, it’s strategic enough, it’s material enough to be in some form of conversion process, which naturally now is more likely to be LNG [liquefied natural gas] then GTL, if that’s the case.” Multiple projects have been proposed to liquefy western Canadian gas and ship it to overseas markets (see Shale Daily, July 31). Manzoni alluded to the LNG projects and said, “…in the context of all of that, we are considering all options and continue to do so…for our Montney resource, how best to create the maximum value for Talisman at the right time for our Montney resource, which is very big and very strategic.”

A new company has leased about 1,500 acres in the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia and hopes to find investors to raise $2 billion to develop an ethane cracker and other downstream facilities.