Muskeg River Mine Project

• Main Author: Shell Canada Limited
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 1997
• Subjects: geo; envir; Canada; Fort McMurray; Muskeg River
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.7939/R3WW7729P; https://era.library.ualberta.ca/items/2e7f1207-79dd-4620-9a01-127f66c81def

Shell Canada Limited (Shell) is applying to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) and Alberta Environmental Protection (AEP) for approval to construct, operate and reclaim a $1.2 billion oil sands mine and processing facilities on the western portion of Oil Sands Lease No. 7277080Tl3 (Lease 13). Lease 13 is located about 70 km north of Fort McMurray, Alberta and about 500 km northeast of Edmonton. The project, to be known as the Muskeg River Mine Project, involves mining and processing oil sands from the western portion of Lease 13 to produce a diluted bitumen (dilbit) product. The project includes: • a truck-and-shovel mining operation • an extraction plant that uses a warm (45°C to 50°C) water-based, caustic-free ore conditioning and extraction process and a conventional centrifuge froth treatment process, coupled with a paraffinic solvent-based product clean-up unit to meet the low solids and water bitumen specification • a tailings management scheme that uses a tailings settling pond for initial tailings storage, converting to consolidated tailings production and the initiation of in-pit storage after four years • utilities and infrastructure Lease 13 covers 20,182 ha (77 sections) and has a potentially mineable bitumen resource of about 800 million m3 (5 billion bbl). The reserves in the Muskeg River Mine area are assessed at about 200 million m3 (1.3 billion bbl). The targeted production rate from the project area is 8.7 million m3/a (55 million bbl/yr) of bitumen, or 23,850 m3 (150,000 bbl) per day. At this rate, the expected mine life is over 20 years. Bitumen from the Muskeg River Mine will be transported to the Edmonton area via a 610-mm diluted bitumen pipeline. The transportation diluent will be returned to Lease 13 via a 323-mm pipeline. Shell's plan is to build a new upgrader at Scotford, which will produce a range of upgraded refinery feedstocks. The bitumen product will also be suitable for direct-marketing as a bitumen product with low water and solids content.