When Sasol built their first plant in SA (Sasolburg), they got a guarantee from the government to buy product at $20/bbl equivalent, so at that time they could make a clear, un-subsidized profit at any crude price over $20. And now that SA’s pussed out and are no longer international pariahs and can buy crude wherever they want, they STILL built an additional gasification plant (Segunda). If it’s such a bad deal even in a nation with access to oil, why would they build it?
I’m sure operating costs are somewhat higher now, so figure maybe $40-50 crude should be break-even. We’re substantially above even that. Plus, part the the reason the Seffricans wanted it was strategeric, they wanted to be energy-independent (and besides, had no choice, as you note). So both from a strategic sense and a pure economic sense, it would seem to me to be a good idea, so long as there isn’t something about our coal that makes it more expensive or less feasible in some way.
You do know they built that 3 decades ago, right?
The first half of Secunda CTL, completed in 1980, cost U.S.$3.2 billion in dollars of the day. Sasol 3 (the mirror-image of Sasol 2), completed 1984, cost $2.5 billion in dollars of the day.