The Fort Hills project, located 90km north of Fort McMurray, is operated by Suncor Energy with a stake of 53.06%. Total holds a stake of 26.05%, while Canadian mining company Teck Resources owns a stake of 20.89%.
The production at the Fort Hills project is expected to be boosted over the next months following the safe startup of secondary extraction, to achieve a plateau of 180,000 barrels per day (bbls/d).
Total Exploration & Production president Arnaud Breuillac said: “We are pleased to see Fort Hills achieving first oil after a challenging construction program of several years in a difficult climatic environment and we congratulate the operator Suncor for having brought to bear all of its expertise to carry out this project.”
Suncor said that as anticipated, the first of three trains from secondary extraction has come online and production on it will continue to move up through the first quarter.
The Fort Hills project had completed five test runs of the front end of the plant, producing 1.4 million barrels of froth which was trucked to the base plant of Suncor for further processing.
The oil sands project has a production capacity of around 194,000bbls/d with nearly 103,000bbls/d of that to be owned by Suncor.
Suncor president and CEO Steve Williams said: “With operations at Fort Hills now in continuous production, we've brought one of the best long-term growth projects in our industry into service and we're now focused on the safe and steady ramp up through 2018.”
Suncor also revealed that the second and third trains of secondary extraction are being insulated and anticipated to begin operations in the first half of this year. The company added that the Fort Hills project continues to be on track to achieve 90% capacity by the end of 2018.
Image: Fort Hills primary extraction plant. Photo: courtesy of Suncor Energy Inc.
