Overview -
Syncrude Canada is a joint venture of oil and gas companies developing Athabasca oil sands properties in northeastern Alberta, Canada. Operations include three separate mines: the Base, North, and Aurora mines. The operation is on eight leases totalling 258,000 hectares of property. The main plant site is located at Mildred Lake, 40 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, and about 500 kilometers northeast of Edmonton.
The Mildred Lake operations include the original Base Mine and the North Mine (both located on lease 17). The operation includes the upgrader facility which also takes oil sands feed from the Aurora mine site located 35 kms to the north.
Syncrude was established in 1975 to mine shallow oil sands deposits using open-pit mining methods, extract the bitumen from the oil sands and upgrade the bitumen to produce a high-quality, light, sweet, synthetic crude oil. It began operations in 1978. Mining began at the North Mine in 1997 and at the Aurora North Mine in 2000.
Syncrude has the largest oil sands crude oil production facility in the world. It is the largest single source of crude oil in Canada and produces 13 per cent of the country's oil requirements. It provides jobs directly and indirectly for 14,000 people across Canada.
Syncrude is the project operator of the three open pit mines; the extraction, upgrading and administrative facilities at the Mildred Lake Plant; and the Aurora mine, primary extraction, co-generation and administrative facilities. The oil sands are tranported to the upgrader facility using hydrotransport (mixing oil sands with water and pumping through a pipeline). The upgrader facility has a throughput of 230,00 barrels per day (bbl/d) as of 2002. The planned expansion target is 500,000 bbl/d by 2015.
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