Canada Ping!
Posted on 08/31/2015 5:33:50 AM PDT by thackney
Canadian Oil Sands Ltd., the largest owner of the giant Syncrude oil-sands project, said on Sunday that it has halted production after a fire damaged equipment at its synthetic crude oil processing facility in northern Alberta.
The company said the fire, which occurred early Saturday and was extinguished without any injuries, affected pipes connected to a water treatment unit at Syncrude’s heavy oil upgrader on the site of its Mildred Lake oil-sands surface mine. The cause of the blaze is under investigation, it said.
While the upgrader’s core machinery wasn’t damaged and the strip mine continues to operate, Canadian Oil Sands said in a statement issued late Sunday that “synthetic crude oil production has been temporarily suspended while a recovery and repair strategy are being developed.”
Canadian Oil Sands didn’t estimate the volume or value of the lost production. Syncrude’s synthetic crude output averaged 207,700 barrels a day in the second quarter and it sold for about 74.47 Canadian dollars ($56.28) per barrel. The company has forecast an average realized price of C$65.75 a barrel for the full year.
The incident adds to the woes of a company that has struggled with unplanned equipment outages at Syncrude and a slide in crude oil prices to six-year lows....
On July 30, Canadian Oil Sands said it lost C$128 million, or 26 Canadian cents a share, in the three months to June 30, compared with a net profit of C$176 million, or 36 Canadian cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Its net debt rose to C$2.4 billion, up from C$2.2 billion in the previous quarter....
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Canada
Early on August 29, a process fire occurred in the interconnecting piping between the hydrotreating units and environmental units at Syncrude’s Mildred Lake upgrader. Emergency personnel quickly responded to the incident and safely extinguished the fire. No injuries were associated with the event and there was no environmental impact.
Syncrude is currently developing a full recovery plan, beginning with an investigation to determine the cause of the incident. The main coker conversion units were not damaged and Syncrude continues to operate, however, synthetic crude oil production has been temporarily suspended while a recovery and repair strategy are being developed....
The fire broke out a few hours after the province’s energy regulator announced it was shutting in 95 pipelines operated by Nexen, one of the partners in the project, because of safety issues identified following a large oil-related spill in July.
Syncrude is a 326,000 barrel-per-day mining and upgrading project, where mined oil sands bitumen is upgraded into refinery-ready synthetic crude.
Should we break out Alistair MacLean’s Athabasca for reading?
Canada Ping!
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