Key facts
Location: | Alberta, Canada |
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| Category: | Oil Sands |
| Owners: | Shell 60%, Chevron 20%, Marathon 20% |
| Base Project: | start-up 2003; 155 kboe/d capacity |
| Expansion Project 1: | additional 100 kboe/d capacity |
| Key contractors (Expansion 1): | AMEC-Colt (upstream), Bantrel (downstream) |
Current developments
The current production capacity of AOSP is 155,000 b/d of synthetic crude. Shell has regulatory approvals in place for Muskeg River Mine, Muskeg River Mine Expansion and Jackpine Mine, enabling production up to a total of 470,000 b/d of minable bitumen. In addition, Shell has existing licences for 290,000 b/d of synthetic crude production at the Scotford Upgrader.
Technology
The Calgary Research Centre undertakes research and technology, providing laboratory and technical services to Shell in Canada.
The centre employs more than 200 scientists, technologists and engineers and their work includes limiting the environmental footprint of our operations through, for example, reduced water use and fewer greenhouse gas emissions from Canada’s oil sands developments.
Environment and society
We spent over CDN $210 million of our total local spend in 2008 on purchasing supplies and services from Aboriginal groups such as the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
Fuels produced from oil sands bitumen emit 5-15% more carbon dioxide (CO2) than the average barrel of crude consumed in the US on a life-cvcle – or wells-to-wheels – basis. We are working to reduce this gap by improving our energy efficiency and exploring the potential for large-scale capture and storage of CO2.
Shell Enhance™ is a new high temperature froth treatment process that can reduce energy usage by about 10%, avoiding 40,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. Scientists at Shell and Natural Resources Canada developed Shell Enhance and we will be build it into the first expansion phase of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP Expansion 1) now under construction.
When we extract oil from the oil sands a mixture of water, coarse sand, silt and clay particles, and a little oil is left behind. We carefully manage this mixture, known as tailings. The tailings dry over time and the remaining solids become the foundation for the future landscape.
Our Scotford Upgrader reuses water from a water treatment plant, cutting its water use by up to 15%.
Markets
A significant portion of the output of the Scotford Upgrader is sold to the Scotford Refinery. The balance of the synthetic crude is sold to the general marketplace (predominantly PADD II in the USA).
