This one is 550 tons.
Posted on 01/28/2010 10:02:03 AM PST by thackney
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. and North West Upgrading will submit a joint proposal to the Alberta government to build an upgrader northeast of Edmonton, the companies announced Thursday.
The facility near Redwater would process 50,000 barrels per day of bitumen from Alberta’s oilsands, with the potential to be expanded in two phases to handle a total of 150,000 bpd.
The two Calgary-based companies have struck a joint ownership agreement, with privately owned NWU as operator.
It’s the first project under Alberta’s BRIK (bitumen royalty in kind) program, which is designed to promote construction of upgraders in Alberta. BRIK allows companies to pay royalties with bitumen instead of cash.
Premier Ed Stelmach’s government has come under fire as oilsands operators have decided to ship bitumen to U.S. facilities for processing, costing the province jobs and economic development that come with the multibillion dollar projects.
CNRL president Steve Laut said 12,500 bpd of bitumen from its own facilities would be processed at the Redwater upgrader. The company owns the Horizon project near Fort McMurray and has extensive heavy oil operations in eastern Alberta,
“We are also supporting the Alberta government’s efforts to build upgrading and refining capacity in Alberta, creating additional employment and wealth
opportunities for Albertans,” Laut said in a news release.
"We think it's a good deal for our shareholders and are happy to be taking another step forward," said Ian MacGregor, chairman of NWU.
MacGregor told The Journal in December that diesel fuel made directly from bitumen will have the same carbon footprint as diesel made from light oil.
"We believe this is a green solution for bitumen," he said.
"This is going to change the way the world looks at the oilsands," he predicted in an interview.
The world's first bitumen-to-diesel facility will be a combined upgrader and refinery, he said. It will collect carbon dioxide while producing top-quality diesel that can even be sold in Europe, which has higher standards than North America.
The mother of all cokers ?
I would expect 3 separate units of 4 drum, 50,000 BPD units.
No big stretch, each unit built years after each other.
Is this the same as what the Coop at Regina has ?
I wasn’t familiar with Regina, so I went looking.
It looks like there are two each, two drum pairs with a single heater. I am more used a heater per pair of drums. But I am still learning about some of the older designs.
There are several other methods depending on inputs and outputs desired and available.
Typical heavy oil upgrade processes include coking (delayed and fluid), residue catalytic cracking, residue hydrocracking, solvent deasphalting, visbreaking and residue hydrotreating. While the details surrounding each of these processes are beyond the scope of this article, it is sufficient to say that most of these processes are capital intensive.
Delayed coking is the process of choice in the U.S. for upgrading heavy oils, and in fact, the U.S. has more delayed cokers than any other country.
From:
http://fwc.com/publications/tech_papers/oil_gas/Heavyoil.pdf
The Regina upgrader was built in Japan. It was shipped up to Lake Superior via the St. Lawrence Seaway and lifted off the ship via a special heavy crane, erected at the Duluth Port Authority. It moved to Regina via an extra long rail car that could lean right or left to keep the upgrader from pulling the car over in turns. The big blue crane is still at Duluth.
This one is 550 tons.
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