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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gasification Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dennis Roth who wrote (596)	10/18/2006 8:17:38 AM
From: Dennis Roth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1740

S.Africa's PetroSA confident of Algeria GTL bid Wed Oct 18, 2006 12:46 PM GMT za.today.reuters.com CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - South Africa's national oil company PetroSA is confident of securing a multi-billion rand deal to establish a gas-to-liquid (GTL) project in Algeria, its chief executive told legislators on Wednesday. "We are very confident because last week we finalised the technology for proof of concept. We have been running the semi-commercial plant at (South Africa's) Mossel Bay for more than three years," said Sipho Mkhize. With the global market wary of over-reliance on crude oil and its vacillating price, GTL conversion technology is expected to gain popularity as it is further commercialised. "It will position us very well internationally in that other countries will then look upon us as a good competitor... The market is big, so the more companies that get into this the better it is for the world," Mkhize said. PetroSA is a 100 percent government-owned company which operates the Mossel Bay plant, the world's largest and one of only three GTL plants globally. The Algerian government invited PetroSA and other bidders, including oil giants Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell to bid on for the Tinhert integrated GTL project. Mkhize said PetroSA, in a consortium with Norwegian state-owned national oil company Statoil and BHP Billiton, has already submitted a technical proposal. A commercial bid was expected to be submitted sometime in November this year, along with competitors Sasol, Chevron and Shell. Mkhize said the Algerian government postponed the date for bids because of uncertainty over the regulatory framework. "Because it's unique that we have an integrated project with both upstream and downstream, like exploration and production as well as GTL," said Mkhize. © Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.