The companies plan to extract clean-motor fuels from natural gas reserves in Uzbekistan using Sasol’s technology, Petronas said in a statement on its website today.

The proposed plant could be bigger than Sasol’s Qatar facility, the largest such plant in the world, Lean Strauss, a general manager at Johannesburg-based Sasol, said in a speech on March 9.

Petronas, Sasol and Uzbekneftegaz signed a heads of agreement in the Uzbek capital Tashkent yesterday and are holding talks with the government of the Central Asian nation on plans to proceed with implementing the project, Kuala Lumpur-based Petronas said. The project faces competitive disadvantages, according to consultant Tony Regan.

“GTL depends on a very cheap supply of gas,” said Regan, who has worked for Royal Dutch Shell Plc on gas projects.

“Uzbekistan dosen’t look like providing cheap feedstock nor does it offer a market for the white (clean) products.”

Uzbekistan will soon become a net oil importer, boosting the need for local fuel production, Strauss said. The country has 61.6 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves, according to BP Plc’s Statistical Review of World Energy June 2008.

The Uzbekistan plant could produce as much as 40,000 barrels a day of transport fuels and would need about 3 trillion cubic feet of gas, he said. The Qatari plant, in which Sasol has a 49% stake, has the capacity to produce 34,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.