IRVING, US: Exxon Mobil Corporation announced the startup of the Kearl oil sands project in Alberta, Canada, which incorporates technological innovations to enhance environmental performance while enabling long-term production to meet future energy demand.
An expansion project has been fully funded and will bring on an additional 110,000 barrels of bitumen production capacity per day by late 2015 using ExxonMobil’s successful Design One Build Many approach, enabling 90 per cent of initial development engineering to be reused. Future debottlenecking plans will be based on actual operating experience and result in Kearl reaching its ultimate production capacity of approximately 345,000 barrels per day by about 2020.
Construction of the initial development entailed 45 million person hours of work and employed a peak workforce of more than 5,000 people. More than $1 billion of the project investment was directed to local suppliers and contractors in the Wood Buffalo region, of which more than 25 percent are Aboriginal-owned and operated. The Kearl project is located about 75 kilometres northeast of Fort McMurray, Alberta, and is operated by ExxonMobil affiliate, Imperial Oil Limited.
“Kearl will access 4.6 billion barrels of resource that will meet energy needs for the next 40 years. By combining a high-quality resource with our proprietary technologies, proven project execution capability and operational excellence, Kearl will provide attractive returns over the long term with a smaller environmental footprint than traditional oil sands mining,” said Neil Duffin, President, ExxonMobil Development Company.
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