Alberta approves MacKay River Commercial Oil Sands Project; operating company a JV between AOSC and PetroChina
28 December 2011
Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. (AOSC) announced that the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board and Alberta Environment and Water has issued full regulatory approval for the MacKay River commercial oil sands project to MacKay Operating Corp.
MacKay Opco is a Calgary-based joint venture between AOSC (40%) and Cretaceous Oilsands Holdings Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of PetroChina (60%). (Earlier post.) The company was formed to operate the jointly owned MacKay River oil sands leases.
The MacKay River project is a 150,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) in-situ project with Phase 1 expected to produce 35,000 bbl/d of oil. Construction of the project will begin next month with start-up targeted for 2014.
To obtain approval in just over 24-months is an achievement and Athabasca is very pleased with the regulatory process. The company filed the application on December 10, 2009 and MacKay Opco received the final approval on December 23, 2011.
—Sveinung Svarte, AOSC president and CEO
This should be one of many future cleaner in-situ tar sands oil extraction projects. The Trans-Mountain dual pipeline to a Pacific Ocean deep sea port should also be completed by 2016 to ship oil to Asian countries for the next 25+ years.
Posted by: HarveyD | 28 December 2011 at 08:30 AM