Johannesburg, South Africa, 6 Feb – South African petrochemical group Sasol, together with the governments of South Africa and Mozambique, plans to invest in increasing the amount of natural gas delivered to South Africa by 20 percent, the group said in Johannesburg Tuesday.

The 1.1 billion rand investment, is aimed at building a gas compression stations in Komatipport, South Africa, in order to increase gas delivery capacity from a current 120 million gigajoules per year to 147 million gigajoules per year.

Construction of the station is scheduled to begin in the middle of the year and the engineering, equipment supply and construction contract was granted to South African company Foster Wheeler South Africa (Pty) Ltd.

The Komatipoort station will make it possible to send natural gas via the 865 kilometers of gas pipeline linking the Pande and Temane gas fields in Mozambique to Sasol’s plants in Sasolburg and Secunda in South Africa.

Investors in the project known locally as a “Republic of Mozambique Pipeline Investment Company (Rompco)” are the goevrnment of South Africa via state company iGas (25 percent), the Mozambican government via Companhia Moçambicana do Gasoduto (25 percent) and Sasol Gas (50 percent).

The gas pipeline is part of a natural gas project with an investment of US$1.2 billion launched in June 2004, by the presidents of the two countries and aims to transport 240 million gigajoules of natural gas per year. (macauhub)