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South Africa produces synthetic fuels from low-grade coal and a small amount from natural gas. The company PetroSA processes and refines gas through the gas-to-liquid (GTL) process in the Mossel Bay plant. It was commissioned in 1992 as the world’s first gas-to-liquids (GTL) refinery and remains the third largest GTL refinery among the five now operating worldwide.

The GTL plant at Mossel Bay has the capacity to process 45,000 bpd of liquid fuels but it has operated below its nameplate capacity for several years and produced less than 22,000 bpd in 2016 because of insufficient natural gas supplies.

As a medium-term solution to keeping the GTL plant operating, PetroSA installed a condensate splitter in 2016 and can process about 18,000 bpd of heavy liquid condensates in addition to nat