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Syncrude Canada Gets OK For Clean Air Equipment |
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| CANADA: November 25, 2004 | ||
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CALGARY, Alberta - Syncrude Canada Ltd., the country's biggest oil sands miner, will spend C$400 million ($340 million) on scrubbing equipment to cut pollution emitted from its northern Alberta plant, it said Wednesday.
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Syncrude, a joint venture led by Canadian Oil Sands Trust and Imperial Oil Ltd., said it won regulatory approval for the project, aimed at more than halving sulfur dioxide emissions from the current 245 tonnes a day. The operation is already undergoing a C$7.8 billion expansion to boost production of synthetic crude from the oil sands by 40 percent to 350,000 barrels a day in 2006. In March, the owners said the expansion expenses ballooned by C$2.1 billion due to labor shortages and soaring costs for materials, especially steel. Syncrude mines the oil sands with huge shovels and, using hot water and chemicals, extracts tar-like bitumen from the sand. The gooey crude is turned into refinery-ready oil at an upgrading plant and pipelined to refineries in Canada and the United States. The process generates major emissions of particulates into the air in the Fort McMurray, Alberta, region, hub of the country's oil sands industry. Syncrude's emissions reduction project will include fitting a three-rain flue gas scrubbing system to its two coking units. The new coker that is part of the expansion is also being fitted with scrubbing equipment, the company said. Syncrude's other partners are Petro-Canada, ConocoPhillips, Nexen Inc., Nippon Oil Corp. unit Mocal Energy Ltd. and Murphy Oil Corp. ($1 US = $1.18 Canadian)
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REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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