Imperial Oil Ltd. ceased all production at its Kearl oil sands operation northeast of Fort McMurray, Alta., with a controlled ramp down due to an ongoing outage on a third-party diluent pipeline related to a release detected Aug. 29.
The facilities remain ready to ramp up to full production rates once the diluent pipeline is back in service and diluent supply is restored, Imperial said Sept. 2.
The impact of the outage and a timeline for restart is unknown, the company said.
The line operator, Inter Pipeline Ltd., shut down a segment of its Polaris pipeline system Aug. 29 following a leak detected on Crown recreational land just east of the Fort McMurray airport in northern Alberta, the company said Sept. 2.
The company identified the source of its pipeline incident adjacent to the Saprae Creek residential area within the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. A segment of the Polaris pipeline will remain shut down until further notice. Inter Pipeline’s Corridor pipeline system was not impacted and safely restarted Sept. 2, the company said.
According to its website, in 2019, an average of 238,000 b/d of diluent was transported on the Polaris system.
