Imperial Oil approves $2B in situ oil sands expansion project
04 February 2012
Imperial Oil Limited has approved a $2 billion expansion of the company’s Cold Lake in situ oil sands operation in northeastern Alberta. The expansion, called Nabiye, will bring on additional commercial bitumen production of more than 40,000 barrels per day at Cold Lake.
The project will access 280 million barrels of recoverable reserves and is expected to start-up by year-end 2014.
The Nabiye expansion will include development of a new steam generation and bitumen-processing plant, field production pads and associated facilities. As with any large and long-life asset, sustaining capital to support the continued operation will be required over the asset life.
Imperial received original regulatory approvals for Nabiye in 2004. Amended regulatory approvals were obtained in 2010 to improve the environmental performance of the Nabiye expansion. The improvements include a 170-MW cogeneration facility to enhance the plant’s energy efficiency and a reduced land footprint for field production pads.
Imperial’s Cold Lake facility is the largest and longest-running in situ oil sands operation in Canada, and includes four steam generation and bitumen production plants. The operation produced an average of 160,000 barrels of bitumen per day in 2011.
Many of the companies in the tar sands area have quite enough money to put together to buy a standard CANDU 600 reactor which could be installed in less than five years. Heat could be taken away from the steam turbine which could even run at one tenth power whilst steam was being diverted to hydrocarbon recovery. "Waste" used US fuel rods and "waste" depleted uranium could be combined to fuel many such reactors for decades without mining any more uranium. Thorium might also be combined with all the material from used fuel rods and no uranium or plutonium would ever have to be used or mined again. China is doing additional tests on such operations to prove the test started decades ago in Canada. ..HG..
Posted by: Henry Gibson | 05 February 2012 at 08:41 PM