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Concept
Sasol
Summary
Sasol Limited is an integrated energy and chemical company based in Sandton, South Africa. The company was formed in 1950 in Sasolburg, South Africa, and built on processes that German chemists and engineers first developed in the early 1900s (see coal liquefaction). Today, Sasol develops and commercializes technologies, including synthetic fuel technologies, and produces different liquid fuels, chemicals, coal tar, and electricity.
Sasol is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE: SOL) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: SSL). Major shareholders include the South African Government Employees Pension Fund, Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa Limited (IDC), Allan Gray Investment Counsel, Coronation Fund Managers, Ninety One, and others. Sasol employs 30,100 people worldwide and has operations in 33 countries. It is the largest corporate taxpayer in South Africa and the seventh-largest coal mining company in the world.
South Africa has large deposits of coal, which had low commercial value due to its high fly ash content. If this coal could be used to produce synthetic oil, petrol, and diesel fuel, it perhaps would have significant benefit to South Africa. In the 1920s, South African scientists started looking at the possibility of using coal as a source of liquid fuels. This work was pioneered by P. N. Lategan, working for the Transvaal Coal Owners Association. He completed his doctoral thesis from the Imperial College of Science in London on The Low-Temperature Carbonisation of South African Coal. In 1927, a white paper from the government was issued describing various oil-from-coal processes being used overseas and their potential for South Africa. In the 1930s, a young scientist named Etienne Rousseau obtained a Master of Science from the University of Stellenbosch. His thesis was entitled "The Sulfur Content of Coals and Oil Shales". Rousseau became Sasol's first managing director. After World War II, Anglovaal bought the rights to a method of using the Fischer–Tropsch process patented by M.
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