Patrick Mann, CMC’s IT Director, is busy building the Carbon Commons, CMC’s innovative collaborative platform.
About 22 attendees from the Carbon Management Annual Conference took advantage of a trip to Fort McMurray to tour Suncor’s oil sands operations. The WestJet flight left at 6 a.m. from Calgary Airport - a seriously early start for most of us. About an hour later we arrived at Fort McMurray to be welcomed by a clear blue sky and great spring weather. Everything was already turning green, in contrast to Calgary.
Suncor is the only oil sands operation that does these kinds of tours. The company also runs them for the public during summer hours. A bus toured us through the city and then north up to the Suncor mine.
Suncor itself has 4,000 full-time staff locally, with another 500 working at remote sites. In addition a semi-annual maintenance was occurring so there were quite a number of contractors onsite working on the upgrader and separator.
The Milenium Mine
Currently Suncor operates only one mine, the Millenium mine. The upgrader and power generation are on the West bank of the river, with the mines and separator on the east bank. The tour started with the incoming heavy trucks hauling tar sand to the crushers. Sand is crushed and the slurry piped up to a separator which works on a simple agitated tank where the heavy sand sinks to the bottom, and the bitumen “froth” is skimmed from the top. If I got it right the sand is further cleaned, and then sent off to the tailings pond nearby. Estimates were that about 97% of the bitumen was recovered.
Bitumen is then fluidized with the addition of naptha (produced by the upgrader and almost 100% recycled), and piped across the river to the upgrader. The upgrader, essentially a “mini-refinery”, is capable of producing naptha, kerosene, and crude. Crude oil is produced in sweet and sour streams. Product from the upgrader is sent to Enbridge storage tanks and then piped to the customer.
Technology Sharing
I was struck by the attention given to recycling, both from the requirement for efficiency and cost-effectiveness, but also as a way of minimizing environmental impact. One very interesting point was the approach to competitiveness between oil sands operators. Generally they have agreed to collaborate on regulatory and environmental technology, and share their approaches, but expect to be competitive on the efficiencies of their separation and upgrading systems.
Suncor for instance recently introduced a very efficient method of drying the mature fine tailings from the bottom of the tailing ponds. These have taken 20-30 years to settle out to a point where they can be used as fill or building material. The new method mixes the sludge with a flocculent, which is then spread out to dry on beaches. This gives a usable sand in only a couple of years, and will significantly decrease the need for the large and ugly tailing ponds. This technology is being shared with other operators.
Reclaimation Efforts
Suncor is very proud of Pond #1 which was started with the original operation in 1967. The pond has been reclaimed, and is now a large, sculpted wetland. This is the first such successful reclamation in the oil sands, and shows what can be done. Trees have been planted with native grasses, and a monitoring system installed. “Certification”, which would entail the expiry of the lease to the provincial government, could happen in about 20 years after vegetation has become firmly established and the underlying tailings consolidated.
Another obvious landmark is a large hill of black petroleum coke. The power plan burns the coke, and some is sold, but there is a huge amount there. We were asked if CMC could find some good uses for it!
Burning the coke produces sulphur dioxide. The sulphur has been recovered since 1992, and is sold generally for fertilizer. About 1,600 tons of sulphur is produced daily, and since there are not rail lines this has to be trucked out, adding substantially to the truck traffic.
The whole Suncor operation produces about 19 Megatonnes of CO2 per year. This is about 88 kg/barrel currently, up from 190 kg/barrel in 1998. There have been steady improvements in the production runs which have halved CO2 production. Suncor is considering CCS as their next step.
The Millenium mine has reserves of about 20 years at current production levels. The ore body is estimated to have about 40-50 years of production left. That does not including the majority of the tar sands which are unrecoverable with current technology.
The trip back was uneventful, and quite quiet as most of us took the opportunity to catch a bit of sleep after the very early start.