Imperial Oil Resources Ltd. has let a field construction contract to Worley for the in-pit tailings infrastructure project at its Kearl open pit mine 70 km north of Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada.
Tailings are the water, clay, sand, and a small amount of bitumen that remain after most of the bitumen has been removed from the sand during the tar-sand extraction process. Imperial treats tailings immediately using thickener technology that intercepts tailings and processes them into a paste where they are then managed until returned underground as part of the ongoing reclamation of the Kearl lease.
The contract, which is expected to take up to 2 years to complete, is for a subsequent phase of the project.
Kearl has an estimated 4.6 billion bbl recoverable bitumen resource. Initial development began in April 2013 and start-up of the Kearl expansion in mid-2015 brought production capacity to 220,000 b/d.
UPDATED to reflect that the project is an open pit mine with no underground operations.
Alex Procyk | Upstream Editor
Alex Procyk is Upstream Editor at Oil & Gas Journal. He has also served as a principal technical professional at Halliburton and as a completion engineer at ConocoPhillips. He holds a BS in chemistry (1987) from Kent State University and a PhD in chemistry (1992) from Carnegie Mellon University. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE).
