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February 3, 2009 - No. 25

Crisis in the Oil Patch

Crisis in the Oil Patch - Peggy Morton
Alberta Government Royalty Agreement with Syncrude: Another Pay the Rich Scheme
Alberta's Carbon Capture and Storage Plans - A Science Educator in Alberta

For Your Information
Upgrader Alley Projects Toppling like Dominoes: Oil Tanks Rust as Sites sit Idle, Construction Plans Halted - Calgary Herald


Crisis in the Oil Patch

The oil and gas monopolies are sharply reducing their plans for new projects in Alberta and demanding measures to protect and expand their capital during the current economic crisis. The price of crude oil has fallen from a high of around $140 a barrel and now hovers around $40 a barrel. Natural gas prices have also fallen to around $5 per thousand cubic feet, down from a high of close to $11. Demand for oil has also been reduced by the economic crisis, resulting in plant closures and falling levels of production.

Some of the latest reports from the oil patch are that:

- only 36 percent of the province's fleet of 224 conventional drilling rigs were operating in the first week of January, the lowest count since 1993 and 50 percent below 2006;
- major oil companies have slashed their exploration budgets by billions of dollars;
- oilsands developers are mothballing their proposed upgrader projects;
- oil sands developer BA Energy Inc. is falling into bankruptcy.

The rapid downturn in the oil patch has caused great hardship for workers who are being laid off in increasing numbers. This clearly shows a need for a new direction in the Alberta and Canadian economies. The one-sided reliance on primary extraction and the export of crude oil and raw bitumen is an ongoing disaster for the workers and for the people of Alberta.

Statistics Canada reported on January 9 that Canada lost 34,000 jobs in December. Alberta had the greatest number of jobs eliminated of any province, with a loss of 16,000 jobs. Just a few months ago, the oil patch was crying about worker shortages and the need to expand the number of indentured workers brought through the Temporary Foreign Workers' Program. These workers now face the threat of being sent home or remaining as undocumented workers even more vulnerable to every kind of abuse from their employers. Last week, Flint Energy Services Ltd. announced a round of layoffs. Schlumberger Ltd. and Haliburton Co., two giant oil services contractors, are letting go more than 2,000 people. Companies are also laying off professionals. At least 2,200 engineers have been let go over the past two months. Projections of the number of workers needed in the future are being drastically lowered. For example, the Construction Owners Association of Alberta has halved its October projection regarding the number of workers needed for future projects. The temporary layoff of 400 workers at the TenarisPrudential plant in Calgary that makes pipe for the oil industry is a sign of how the crisis will reverberate through the manufacturing industries which serve the oil industry.

Demands of the Oil Barons

Big oil is demanding sharply reduced royalties and taxes as well as a big increase in subsidies and handouts from the public treasury. The workers and their allies are told that if only the government would stop "gouging" the owners of capital, then life would be fine or at least tolerable in the oil patch. The fact that the sole interest of the oil and gas monopolies is to expand and protect their capital is hidden while the monopoly media peddle straightforward disinformation about supposedly ever-increasing royalties, taxes, and environmental regulation.

A typical rendering was provided in a column in the February 1, 2009 Calgary Herald by Calgary oil service executive David Yager:

"The oil business has said for years that if governments just leave it alone, it will roll with the punches of volatile commodity prices. But our governments cannot control themselves when it come to changing tax policies, increasing royalties, and creating an expensive and tangled mishmash of environmental protection policies and regulatory approval processes. Each is an employment killer created by politicians who purport to cry about jobs for ordinary Canadians."

The oil monopolies in Alberta are past masters at using the state to maintain and increase their profits. When speculation drives oil prices sky high, the oil monopolies go for the big score, and when prices fall they demand even greater looting of the public treasury. Premier Ed Stelmach has already taken steps to prop up the monopolies. Alberta's new royalty regime was to take effect January 1, 2009, but the Alberta Government will now provide companies drilling deep wells after January 1, 2009 with a one-time option of selecting new transitional royalty rates that are lower than the current rates. These rates would be effective for five years. The government expects that this will result in a loss of $1.8 billion in royalties over the five years of the program. To give another example, in July 2008, the Alberta Government announced it would provide $2 billion to fund projects to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through new Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects to promote solutions to the problem of its "dirty oil" from the tarsands. Stelmach has also asked Harper for additional money to battle climate change.

Stelmach has also made the following proposals:

- Reducing trade barriers between provinces, e.g., by signing the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) agreement (see TML Daily, June 13, 2007 - No. 96).
- Obtaining an economic stimulus package from Ottawa for the province's key industries, including oil and gas, agriculture, and forestry.
- Building provincial infrastructure using federal stimulus money.
- Revising environmental protection legislation to eliminate laws that slow infrastructure projects.

The long-term, lopsided reliance of the Alberta economy on primary oil extraction, which depends on export of primary resources means, that the boom can disappear almost as quickly as the weather changes with a chinook wind. Alberta has traditionally relied on supplying oil to an integrated North American market and increasingly, as a "secure source of oil" for the U.S., Premier Stelmach has already made it clear to Obama that Alberta is the United States' best friend when it comes to supplying reliable and secure oil. His approach could best be described not as "cap-and-trade" but as "cap-in-hand." At the same time, there is concern that Obama's projected environmental policies could be a problem. During his campaign, he promised to end his country's dependence on "dirty, dwindling and dangerously expensive oil." This is a specific reference to Alberta's tar sands oil, which has been labelled "dirty oil" by environmental groups. However, Stelmach is convinced the United States needs "affordable energy" now more than ever to pull itself out of its own economic and financial quagmire. Stelmach says his government is eager to work with Washington, and that Alberta takes the environment seriously. If Obama is demanding cleaner oil, then Stelmach is happy to provide billions of dollars to make it cleaner.

To protect the interests of the Alberta-based oil monopolies, Stelmach has already asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper to allow Alberta to have a seat at any future North American climate change discussions. However, Harper rejected his request, stating that the federal government will maintain sole responsibility for negotiating a North American climate change pact with the Obama administration.

While banking on Obama, Stelmach has made hints of an alternative strategy. Likely taking his cue from Enbridge's proposed Gateway pipeline, Stelmach stated in May 2008 that if the United States boycotts oil from Alberta's tarsands, the province will build a pipeline to carry crude oil to the West Coast so it can sell to other countries like China. Stelmach said "We will not only depend on the American market, we will expand markets. And if that means building a pipeline to the coast and selling oil to another country, we will." During the federal election, Harper announced in Calgary that he might restrict export of raw bitumen to countries with lax environmental laws, an indication that the Harper government had already guaranteed a secure source of oil to the Bush administration and is at odds with the provincial government's interest in the Asian market. At the same time, the cost of such a project, the need for significant Asian involvement, and the lack of uptake by the Harper government casts doubt on the future of such a project. Non-traditional players in the oil sands such as China, Norway and France are putting their oil sands plans on hold.

There Is an Alternative -- Let's Discuss!

What Stelmach proposes as a so-called solution to Alberta's current problems is more of the same and more hardship for the people, i.e., to provide every assistance to the oil monopolies so they can continue their unchecked plunder of our resources and everyone else be damned. And while Stelmach often states that the oil resources "belong to Albertans," in practice Albertans have no say at all in what is done with them and whose interests they serve. Discussion is needed on what the working class must do to build the alternative, i.e., to build a sovereign, pro-social, self-reliant economy that places the rights of the people first.

The current economic crisis is showing even more starkly the need for public control and ownership of the energy resources. Control must be squarely in the hands of the working class and it allies with the aim of humanizing the social and natural environment. Anyone who has been anywhere near the oil patch knows that there is a huge pool of expertise among those who actually work in the industry. Monopoly right is blocking the development of the energy resources in the interests of the people of Alberta and Canada, of Mother Earth, the workers and the aboriginal nations.

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Royalty Agreement with Syncrude:
Another Pay the Rich Scheme

In November 2008 the Alberta government reached a deal with Syncrude on the issue of royalties. In announcing the deal, the Edmonton Journal described it as a "win-win" situation. "After almost a year of negotiations, the provincial government reached a royalty deal with Syncrude [on Novemebr 17] that will see the oilsands giant pay the government an additional $975 million by 2015.

"For Syncrude, the deal means cost certainty. For the government, it clears one of the last obstacles before the new royalty regime starts on Jan. 1." (Archie McLean, Edmonton Journal November 18 2008)

Previous articles in the monopoly media described the "tough stand" being taken by Syncrude. In March 2008, the Financial Post ran a story under the headline "Syncrude won't bite on Alberta's royalty deal: Imperial Oil says if shareholders given 'short shrift,' province can forget it." The article quoted Tim Hearn, Chief Executive of Imperial Oil Ltd., which owns 25 percent of Syncrude, who said:

"We have been very clear. We told the government that we were prepared to change the contract to the new terms primarily on the condition that the inherent value of the contract was somehow recognized in the new arrangement. They have been very public themselves that they do honour contracts. They have gone to Washington and elsewhere around the world and said, 'We are a good place to do business, do you want our contracts? I would hope and expect that that would be the case when we finish up with them, that we can shake hands and have a deal."

In other words, Syncrude, which had a contract good until 2016, declared it is not going to pay a single cent more. Now apparently in the midst of a meltdown in the oil sands, Syncrude has signed a deal that according to Alberta Energy will pay the government close to an additional billion dollars. How is this unlikely scenario accounted for? No one in the monopoly media even asked. It turns out that it is the usual smoke and mirrors to cover up the real agreement reached. Even the most basic information is not provided to the Canadian people. The fact that the government reached terms extremely favourable to Syncrude was simply not discussed.

The agreement reached on November 18 included the following terms:

- Syncrude will begin paying royalties based on bitumen product, less its associated operating and capital costs, rather than paying royalties calculated on fully upgraded synthetic crude oil. It is expected that bitumen will be valued at about 50 percent of the price of synthetic crude (upgraded bitumen).

- Syncrude will repay previous royalty which was deducted to account for the costs of upgrader expansion at a cost of about $1.25 billion plus interest. This will be repaid over 25 years.

- Syncrude will continue to pay royalties at the old rates of 1 percent on gross revenues and 25 percent of net revenues, but on bitumen rather than synthetic oil until 2016. The new royalty rates set royalties at from 1-5 percent on gross revenue and 25-40 percent of net revenue depending on the price of oil. Syncrude would then pay an incremental royalty of up to $975 million depending on total production paid as follows:

2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
Total
$75 million
$75 million
$100 million
$150 million
$225 million
$350 million
$975 millon

- All Syncrude leases will be treated as a single project. This means that whenever expansion or construction on the site is taking place, Syncrude can revert to pre-payout terms. This is a huge score for Syncrude since the royalty/taxation arrangement for tar sands oil is based on revenue and expenditures for each project, and the claim of the owners of equity on realized added-value. Costs of production, especially fixed construction costs, can be amortized at a rate that keeps the royalty/tax on equity profit at 1 percent until "payout." Even this pittance of one percent is only payable once the declared equity profit in the particular project compared with the total investment, which is its rate of equity profit, exceeds the current long-term Canada bond rate.

- Other terms agreed to include an agreement on a bitumen valuation methodology, that Alberta will not elect to take royalties in kind before 2012 and only if the same terms apply to the rest of the industry. Upgrading of royalty in kind barrels through 2015 will only be on terms commercially acceptable to the Syncrude owners, and Syncrude retains the ability to substitute bitumen from alternative sources.

Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. has estimated that the agreement means that the added value retained by the monopoly increases by about 12 percent while the added value going to government decreases by the same amount. This is what the monopoly media has described as Syncrude agreeing to pay more!

In 2007, the Stelmach government conducted a royalty review, accompanied by all kinds of hype that the owners of the resource, the people of Alberta should receive a "fair" value for the resources. At that time, TML pointed out:

"The anti-social concept of turning public control of natural resources over to private interests uses royalty payments as a neo-liberal buffer to deflect public outrage and opposition to the sell-out of a public natural resource. Royalties per barrel of oil or stumpage fees per trees cut create an illusion that the public is gaining something from their natural resource and that private interests are paying a form of economic rent. This plays on the Canadian liberal conscience of fairness to sell-out the people's natural resources, which are often located on unceded Aboriginal First Nations' land. Without challenging and rendering accounts with our liberal conscience, Canadians are reduced to arguing about the amount of the royalty but not the basic principle that natural resources belong in their entirety to the people and must serve the public good. It is a matter of affirming public right not bargaining right away in the name of fairness and the reasonable accommodation of contending interests.

"The human-centred concept of natural resources has never held importance in official Canada. Such a concept upholds as principle that natural resources are public and must remain public under all circumstances and that all benefits from transforming natural resources into usable products must flow to the public. Under such a principle, private interests could only be involved as paid contractors for actual work performed or as investors at a set return. Private interests should never control the social product itself such as oil, timber, natural gas, nickel, gold, uranium etc. much less their wholesale distribution and price. Natural resources are part of the foundation of modern life and society, the other being the human factor. The human factor has mostly been freed from direct private ownership but the other pillar of life and society, our natural resources, languishes under private monopoly right and ownership. The human factor cannot blossom, move society forward and fully humanize the social and natural environments unless it becomes one seamless whole with the natural resources of Mother Earth free from the narrow interests of private monopoly right and ownership."

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Alberta's Carbon Capture and Storage Plans

On July 8, 2008, the Alberta Government announced a $2 billion kick-start to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through new Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects. CCS is a process that captures and stores carbon dioxide emissions before they are emitted into the air, for example, by a coal-fired power plant or a refinery. The carbon dioxide is separated from other emissions, dehydrated, compressed, and transported by pipeline or other means. It is then either injected into geological formations to help increase production from oil and gas reservoirs or coal beds, or else injected one to two kilometers deep into porous rock formations where it is sealed and monitored. Alberta's energy industry has been injecting carbon dioxide into depleted oil fields to enhance oil recovery (EOR) for more than 20 years.

Previously, on April 24, 2008, the Alberta Government had announced the formation of the new Alberta Carbon Capture and Storage Development Council, to develop Alberta's plan to move ahead with carbon capture and storage projects. Council members were selected from the fossil fuel energy industry (9), academia (one economist and one engineer/economist), and the provincial and federal governments (5). The chairperson is Jim Carter, former president of oilsands giant Syncrude. Other energy industry representatives are from Epcor, Nexen, Suncor, PennWest Energy, Shell, Petro-Canada, Enbridge, and Encana. Only one of the academics has research experience in CCS.

Many governments and corporations around the world are now touting CCS, an idea first introduced on the 1970s, as the best strategy to lower levels of carbon dioxide emissions. A few major projects have been developed, generally with very large-scale government funding, such as Norway's Sleipner Oilfield Project initiated in 1996. Most major energy corporations are proceeding cautiously or have already mothballed their projects on "economic grounds," stating that developing and testing CCS technology requires "significant" government financial support such as direct grants, interest-free loans and tax concessions. Further, many corporations refuse to proceed with CCS without protection from liability for any negative effects from permanently stored carbon dioxide.

Carbon capture and storage is being presented as the major way to reduce carbon emissions in Alberta. In its Interim Report, the Council stated that some 70 percent of Alberta's potential reductions are expected to arise from CCS.

For decades, the energy monopolies have made huge profits through their plunder of Alberta's resources while at the same time releasing huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the air, an identified cause of global warming. Now the rich will be paid once again to implement carbon capture and storage technology. This is not surprising since the province-appointed decision-making body on CCS is controlled by the energy monopolies. The people of Alberta have not been consulted, yet the Alberta government has already decided to hand over $2 billion to the monopolies.

As the government of Alberta often states, the resources belong to the people. This means that the people must decide. There is a need for widespread public discussion on CCS to evaluate its worth. Scientific research into CCS is still at an early stage and there is a lack of reliable testing on a large scale, particularly the viability of permanent storage. Important issues need to be investigated such as potential leakage of stored carbon dioxide, effects of carbon dioxide rising to the shallow subsurface, danger of asphyxiation through rapid release, and potential contamination of drinking water through leaching of toxic chemicals from rocks into water. Only if the people have their say can we develop a direction for the energy industry that is based on serving the needs of the people, including their need for a healthy natural environment.

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For Your Information

Upgrader Alley Projects Toppling like Dominoes: Oil Tanks Rust as Sites Sit Idle, Construction Plans Halted

The fate of the abandoned Heritage oilsands processing site has become a metaphor for the fortunes of Edmonton's Upgrader Alley.

Alberta's industrial heartland, a swath of refineries and petrochemical plants scattered among thousands of hectares of farmland north of Fort Saskatchewan, was set to become the largest oil processing and refining centre outside the Gulf Coast.

This would be the place where energy companies would add value to Alberta's massive raw bitumen resource.

But at BA Energy's construction site, giant vessels now lay strewn about a windswept field like toppled dominoes, half-buried in snow.

Costing more than half-a-billion dollars to build, the specially designed technological marvels were transported from far-off places such as South Korea and left here to rust.

All activity at the once-bustling site has stopped, except for a lone security guard making the rounds.

Apart from the shrill call of a raven, the single deafening sound is the wind blowing through thickets of trees. The only completed portion of the project, a 10-storey process stack, towers over everything around.

Neil Shelly, executive director of the Alberta's Industrial Heartland Association, calls it the Alberta economic bungee jump: take a big leap of faith and hope your lifeline snaps back at the last possible second before it all comes crashing to the ground.

"We're the canary in the coal mine," he says. "Starting about the spring of 2008, work started to slow down around here. The site was pretty much a victim of the cost escalation that was happening in Alberta."

Just two years ago, hopes were high for $100-billion worth of new facilities to upgrade Alberta's growing oilsands production, part of what the provincial government touted as an "integrated," value-added strategy.

Shelly calls the period between 2005-06 "the Gold Rush days."

In the heady days of $140 oil, everything seemed possible -- carbon capture, gasification, transferring the waste products from facilities to use as feedstock -- in what was to be one of the most modern oil refining "clusters" in the world.

The $4-billion Heritage plant was supposed to be the hub of that new vision, a marvel of technology and innovation ushering in a brave new value-added world.

"Some reality happened in 2008," Shelly says.

The financial crisis preceded a recession few observers saw coming or could have imagined 18 months ago. In December, BA filed for bankruptcy protection and, earlier this week, reached a deal with its lenders that gives the company until April 29 to restructure.

Value Creation, BA's parent company, didn't return requests for comment, but Shelly says "the writing was on the wall" more than a year ago. Even before oil prices fell from record highs, skyrocketing costs set off a domino effect, forcing companies such as Petro-Canada to mothball projects such as the proposed Sturgeon County upgrader.

Others followed.

Norway's StatoilHydro scrapped plans for an upgrader and French stalwart Total pushed the startup of its proposed upgrader back as much as two years.

In August, Total bought troubled Synenco, which was proposing an upgrader as part of its Northern Light oilsands mine -- now on permanent hold.

Of eight proposed projects, only one remains on the books: Shell Canada's current Scotford expansion, which was too far in the construction phase to be halted. But Shell too, has placed future expansion phases on hold until markets improve.

North West Upgrading is also in limbo while it awaits financing to build an upgrader of its own. A victim of the financial crunch, North West found it difficult to raise capital for its merchant upgrading facility after credit markets froze.

Unlike integrated upgraders, which are tied to a specific project or mine, North West's plant would take the bitumen from third parties and process it into higher value products, including diesel fuel.

Rob Pearce, North West's senior vice-president and chief financial officer, said the company is ready to start digging as soon as it gets the cash. It is also hoping to gain commercial agreements that will, in turn, allow the company to raise the money needed to begin work.

Pearce confirmed North West answered a government request for expressions of interest to process the province's share of bitumen it will take in lieu of petroleum producers paying royalties. A formal request for proposals is expected to be issued later this spring.

"I think we can add a lot of value to the government's barrels," he says.

Assuming oil prices improve within the next 12 months, most of the plans could be reinstated by 2012, amounting to a four-year delay, he reckons.

That's the best case scenario.

In the worst case, upgrading in the province never really recovers and a far greater proportion of Alberta's oilsands production is exported as raw bitumen to the United States.

Dave Collyer, who heads the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, agrees homegrown upgrading may be the first casualty of the downturn.

Currently, three-quarters of Alberta's bitumen is upgraded in the province. Although the absolute amount will increase as production rises, the overall percentage of upgraded production is expected to fall as processing plants are shelved. Some estimates have suggested as much as 60 per cent of Alberta's future supplies could be sent to refineries in the U. S., taking jobs and revenue along with it.

In the run-up to gaining the Progressive Conservative leadership, Premier Ed Stelmach likened the notion of pumping raw bitumen down the pipeline to stripping the topsoil from a farm and trucking it away.

Nonetheless, Collyer says the economics of upgrading at home have always been "difficult." "I would probably say more (raw bitumen) is likely to be exported in the future," he concurs.

But the CAPP boss is unapologetic, given Alberta's higher cost structure, its distance from major consuming markets and looming environmental constraints. In most cases, it's cheaper to re-configure existing facilities in the U. S. than to build "green field" projects here at home.

"That's a challenge Alberta has always faced," he continues. "The market should generally decide where these upgraders should be built."

Already, the cancellations have had a ripple effect that has put a big dent in the province's value-added vision. Immediately across the road from the abandoned BA site, an Enbridge-built tank farm meant to supply bitumen to the boilers sits idle. Half a kilometre away, a specially designed plant built by Aux Sable to capture flue gas from the Heritage stack -- and strip it of potentially valuable products like carbon dioxide and ethane -- also sits idle.

In May 2007, Canadian Pacific took steps to build a special rail yard to move construction materials into Upgrader Alley in anticipation of a construction boom that never materialized. It too sits empty.

The magnitude of the turnaround isn't lost on government officials. In December, the province outlined an energy strategy that relies heavily on the synergies created by clusters of refineries and upgraders.

As part of the royalty changes announced last year, the province has committed to taking its share of bitumen royalties in kind, which could amount to more than one million barrels a day in the next decade -- enough to feed a dozen 100,000-barrel-a-day upgraders and refineries.

The government has indicated a desire to upgrade its share in Alberta and will issue a request for proposals later this year, says Alberta Energy spokesman Jason Chance.

While acknowledging the setback posed by the delays, Chance says the province still believes in the integrated value strategy.

"We're moving forward on a policy basis, but it's dependent on factors outside our control, related to credit markets and commodity prices. "We're very much affected by the downturn," he adds. "But we remain committed to it (the value-added strategy) and confident the activity will return."

Hanging in the balance is the fate of some two-dozen communities surrounding the capital region. Redwater Mayor Mel Smith said his town has created two new subdivisions, with plans for two more, in anticipation of a population boom. Planners expected the town of 2,300 to swell to more than 3,000 residents, the first new growth since oil was discovered after the Second World War.

Smith acknowledges many people are comparing the current situation to the bust of the 1980s. He worked in the oilpatch during those years and owned an oilfield-service company prior to becoming mayor. He understands the comparisons, but thinks it's different this time. "There are a lot of folks saying, 'We've seen this before,' just like it was in '82," Smith says, adding he remains hopeful, but cautious. "I don't want to call it naive, but I'm optimistic."

Likewise, the Heartland Association's Shelly has little doubt the region will bounce back when oil prices improve. In his mind, it's a question of "when," not "if." "The fundamentals are there. If you think oil is going to be under $100 a barrel in five years time, you are fooling yourself," he says. "The world will come back to Alberta."

Industrial Heartland: Project status

BA Energy (Value Creation)
- Location: Strathcona County
- Project type: 160,000 barrel/ day bitumen upgrader
- Current status: Construction halted by company in 2008; to be reviewed in four to five years

Fort Hills (Petro-Canada)
- Location: Sturgeon County
- Project type: 340,000 barrel/ day bitumen upgrader.
- Current status: On hold pending fiscal review by project proponents

North West Upgrading
- Location: Sturgeon County
- Project type: 150,000 barrel/ day upgrader and diesel refinery
- Current status: Project design and business case ongoing; financial partners

Shell Canada, Phase 1 expansion
- Location: Strathcona County
- Project type: 90,000 barrel/ day expansion to existing upgrading facility.
- Current status: Construction completion by 2009, commissioning to commence in 2010

Shell Canada, Phase 2 to 4 expansion
- Location: Strathcona County
- Project type: Three additional expansions of 100,000 barrels/day each (cumulative total of 300,000 barrels/day) to upgrading capacity
- Current status: ERCB hearing set for 2009, financial review to be conducted by company before proceeding.

Statoil Hydro
- Location: Strathcona County
- Project type: 240,000 barrel/ day bitumen upgrader
- Current status: Company withdrew project application in 2008

Total E&P
- Location: Strathcona County
- Project type: 200,000 barrel/ day bitumen upgrader
- Current status: Regulatory hearings set for 2009; financial review to be conducted by company before proceeding

(Source: Alberta's Industrial Heartland Association, January 6, 2009)

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