Livemint. Sasol Ltd has expressed its willingness to acquire a minority stake in a coal-to-liquids joint venture with Coal India Ltd (CIL) and NMDC Ltd, a little more than one year after it formed a 50:50 venture with Tata Steel Ltd for a similar project.
Sasol is pursuing global opportunities to commercialize its coal-to-liquids technology through its arm, Sasol Synfuels International (Pty) Ltd. The company’s readiness for a second joint venture was conveyed during coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal’s recent visit to South Africa, according to Partha S. Bhattacharyya, CIL’s chairman.
The Union government has already awarded a coal block near Talcher in Orissa to the Sasol-Tata Steel venture that was formed in early 2010. It is expected to be operational by 2018 and could produce 80,000 barrels of liquid fuel a day, Sasol’s India head Mark Schnell had said soon after the unit had been set up.