Abstract
Canada has the third-largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Of Canada's 173 billion barrels of oil reserves, 170 billion barrels are located in Alberta, of which about 168 billion barrels are recoverable from bitumen. In 2012, 1.8 million bbl/day were produced from the oil sands of which 800,000 bbl/day was from mining and 1.0 million bbl/day were recovered by in situ techniques. Looking ahead to 2020, oil sands production will reach 3.2 million bbl/day by the end of the outlook. And in situ production is forecast to produce more than 2.0 million bbl/day.
JACOS (Japan Canada Oil Sands Limited: subsidiary company of JAPEX) started their expansion project at Hangingstone lease in Alberta, Canada.
The Hangingstone Expansion Project is a joint venture project to develop an area adjacent to the current Demonstration Project by JACOS and Nexen Energy ULC (Nexen) in which JACOS holds a 75% participating interest as the operator, while Nexen holds the remaining 25% interest. Completing the front end engineering design and obtaining Scheme Approval from the Alberta provincial government in November, 2012, the partners have commenced full-scale development work aiming at production start-up in 2016.
The initial stage will result in bitumen production capacity of around 20,000 barrels per day. A decision on expansion of the facilities to bitumen production capacity of approximately 30,000 barrels per day will be made after start-up of the operation. Bitumen production will continue for around 30 years using the steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) method, which has already been utilized at the Hangingstone Demonstration operation for more than 10 years.
