Kearl mine holds promise for the future

The Kearl oil sands project, located in the Kearl Lake area, is about 70 kms north of Fort McMurray and remains one of the more active sites in the entire oil sands development.

Kearl’s total recoverable bitumen is estimated to be 4.6 billion barrels, all of which is located near the surface and will be recovered over the 50-year life of the project using open-pit mining methods similar to those used at existing sand mines in the region.

Kearl production based on full development plans is expected to average about 300,000 barrels of bitumen per day. This will likely involve start-up of an initial mine development in 2012 with a capacity of about 100,000 barrels per day, followed by two additional phases each producing about 100,000 barrels per day. At its peak, Kearl could produce up to 345,000 barrels per day.

Prior to the official start of production, an initial site ditching and drainage program was completed in the first half of 2008 and work in the second half of that year included clearing and draining surface water from the initial mining and plant site areas. Muskeg and topsoil is still being removed and stockpiled for use in future reclamation.

As mentioned earlier, the mine’s design concept is similar to others in the region and plans are to use state-of-the-art, large-scale shovels, trucks, crushers and an oil sands hydrotransport system. The mined ore will be crushed, mixed with water for slurrying, transported and conditioned in a pipeline, and fed into a bitumen-extraction facility. The bitumen will be separated as froth (a mixture of bitumen, water and solids) and further treated in a treatment plant to produce bitumen for sale.

Current plans do not call for any on-site upgrading facilities. To reduce the bitumen’s viscosity so that it can be shipped by pipelines, a number of blending options are being considered but one thing that is known for certain is that the product will be shipped to market through a pipeline system.