America’s energy boom has resulted in big gains for investors, not the least of which has come from our own Cimarex Energy (NYSE: XEC), with a 90-percent-plus return. Cimarex boosted its oil and gas production from properties in Oklahoma’s Cana-Woodford shale play, spurring rapid growth in both revenue and earnings over the past two years.

Last year US natural gas producers pumped more than 24 trillion cubic feet of gas and are expected to pump 33 trillion cubic feet per year by 2040. That surge has driven strong gains across America’s energy patch, as exploration and production companies, midstream pipeline operators and the petrochemical industry have all profited from cheap, abundant natural gas.

Foreign companies are now moving to take advantage of the energy revolution unleashed by the twin technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling.

South African petrochemical giant Sasol (NYSE: SSL) is building a 3,000-acre complex in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to “crack” that cheap gas. Cracking breaks natural gas into its component parts, including ethylene. That ethylene is used to produce plastics, paints and host of other products. Sasol also plans to use a process called gas-to-liquids (GTL) to convert the gas to diesel and other fuels. The facility, expected to cost as much as $21 billion, will take advantage of existing and future pipelines and other infrastructure along the US Gulf Coast, and should be fully up and running later this year.

Sasol has been in the business for decades, using the GTL process to produce diesel fuel for Germany during World War II, and for South Africa when international sanctions restricted the country’s access to petroleum.  In addition to its core petrochemicals business, the company also mines about 40 million tons of coal each year in South Africa to use as feedstock in a coal-to-liquid (CTL) process to produce synthetic fuels.

Sasol has benefited from low-cost raw materials over the past five years, helping to maintain average operating margins over 20 percent. It has also gotten a boost from its base currency, the South African rand. While most of the company’s revenue comes in as US dollars, most of its costs are rand-denominated. The rand has depreciated by more than 19 percent against the dollar over the past 18-months, providing a huge boost to earnings.

In the first six-months of its fiscal year ended in December, earnings per share rose by 26 compared to last year, thanks to both the weak rand and higher prices for the petrochemicals it sells.

Sasol should maintain its cost advantage in the future, especially since it now can tap into the US natural gas stream. While four liquefied natural gas export terminals have received conditional approval here in the US, which will increase gas prices, it is highly unlikely that US natural gas prices will approach the $15 level which prevails in much of the rest of the world.

Oil prices are also unlikely to drop below $100 per barrel barring some massive supply disruption, continuing to provide a significant cost advantage to use coal and natural gas as feedstock. That allows Sasol to capture wider spreads between using low-cost feedstock and higher-value fuels and chemicals.

Sasol is also moving to open GTL facilities in the central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, in Mozambique and Nigeria in Africa, and in Canada. Those additional opportunities coupled with the weak rand and low feedstock costs have prompted analysts to take a more bullish view on the company, boosting their forecasted EPS from ZAR59.74 a month ago to ZAR60.44 today.

While strong, sustainable earnings growth is the most attractive feature of Sasol, it has also consistently paid an attractive dividend for more than a decade. With the exception of one dividend cut in 2010, which it has more than made up for, it has increased its semiannual payout in nine out of the last 10 years with shares currently yielding 3.1 percent.

Taking advantage of cheap American natural gas while pursuing additional global growth opportunities, Sasol is a buy up to 62.