Who Owns Sasol?

Sasol was born from strategic vulnerability. In the late 1940s South Africa had almost no domestic oil and feared supply isolation, so the government formed the South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation in 1950, abbreviated Sasol, under engineer Etienne Rousseau. Its purpose was to commercialize the German Fischer-Tropsch process, which turns coal into liquid fuel.

The first synthetic fuel plant opened at Sasolburg in 1955, giving the company and the town their names. When international sanctions tightened through the 1970s and oil crises hit, the government ordered a far larger complex at Secunda in Mpumalanga, which became one of the biggest industrial sites in the world, a single facility converting tens of millions of tonnes of coal yearly into a third of South Africa's liquid fuel.

Sasol privatized with its JSE listing in 1979 and spent the following decades diversifying: chemicals plants, the Mossel Bay gas-to-liquids refinery completed in 1992, mining operations to feed Secunda, and international projects including the Oryx gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar and the Lake Charles Chemicals Project in Louisiana, a massive investment plagued by cost overruns that finally reached full operation in the early 2020s.

The 2020s brought strategic retreat and decarbonization pressure. Sasol sold stakes, wrote down assets, exited some international positions, and in 2024 appointed insider Simon Baloyi as President and CEO to refocus on Southern African strength: Secunda, Mozambique gas, and chemicals. Fiscal 2025 ended June 30, 2025 with turnover of R249.1 billion, adjusted EBITDA of R51.8 billion, and free cash flow up 75 percent to R12.6 billion, aided by a R4.3 billion legal settlement with Transnet.