Ok, well, I'm still optimistic; the numbers seem to work for continued growth. I don't expect GTL to be the silver bullet to cover all fuel needs; but I expect it to be a major player for the intermediate future (now till 100yrs).
How am I optimistic?
1) $1.32T and... whats your point? You throw that number out there without explaining why you think our 15Tr economy can't handle it.
2) Rome wasn't built in a day. Don't need to cut all imports to 0 in one year investment. Especially considering most of our oil imports comes from Canada and Meheco.
3) Over 10-20yrs, thats a very reasonable capex plan for the oil industry.http://www.aogr.com/index.php/web-features/exclusive-story/surveys-forecast-increased-capex-programs
Lets see: 300B capex US industry, times 20 years, assuming no growth, carry the one, $6Tr industry over 20yrs can't afford $1.3tr in alternative sources?
Sasol seems to disagree on the spread economics...http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/77ba75b6-3d80-11e2-9f35-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2L0ZgCQmu
This quotes a price spread of $70/bbl, for a rough calc...
$70/bbl x 96kbbl/day x 365day/yr = $2.45B/yr
$13B capex / $2.45B/yr = 5.3yr ROI
That is pretty good. Yup, definitely still optimistic.
Ugh.
Okay, more detail,
1. you can't directly compare overnight capital (1.32T) with amortized income...for either ROIC or overall investment.
2., sasol's ONE plant isn't going to change the price much...132 of those would by changing the NG demand curve.
3. In good economic conditions, the demand for the liquid fuel grows by 3-5% per year, meaning over 20 years, you actually need double that.
4. Plant lifetime needs to be taken into account (can be done with a modified discount rate)
5. That spread "profit" is reduced by other costs (distribution to:from, O&M, etc), I would bet based n distro costs currently of $5-10 for liquids and gas equivalent liquids, that the spread is about half, and if the price spread decreases due to increased demand for gas, the income can easily drop faster due to fixed costs.
With all of the above, what you end up with is an effective discount rate of 10-15%, and an income spread about 60% of the idea fuel comparison...meaning the cap-ex is effectively 2-3x as high.
I just ran this kind of analysis, in more detail, for a nuclear customer to compare synthetic fuel generation with GTL...and found a few good papers.
I'm not saying it can't be done, its just less rosy that it seems at first blush. The reason the synthetic fuel generation wins economically is it doesn't have the deman caused cost increase as you aren't "diverting" production of anything existing to do it (fuel cost for nuke is a really small fraction, unlike GTL), so it becomes better economically, as the capital costs for incremental investment decrease, meaning the spread increases over time with greater demand for the product, rather than decreases.