Imperial Oil Moving Forward With $7 Billion+ Plan For New Tar Sands Development - NYT

[hatrack]

Imperial Oil, Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary, has broken the oil sands investment slump with an announcement on Monday that the company will proceed with a $7.1 billion project to mine bitumen from the Kearl Lake project, located about 44 miles northeast of Fort McMurray, Alberta.

Imperial says the Kearl project, which is expected to operate for half a century, will eventually yield a daily average of 300,000 barrels of bitumen — a thick, sticky substance that can be processed into fuel oil. Site preparation actually began last year, and the mining operation will commence in 2012.

Federal and provincial officials reviewed the Kearl Lake proposal in 2006, and a joint panel issued a favorable recommendation in 2007, with the caveat that the company undertake various remediation measures.

Last year, four environmental organizations, including the Sierra Club of Canada and the Pembina Institute, challenged that decision in federal court. “I don’t think there’s enough time being spent by federal regulators or Alberta regulators in actually making sure they know how to manage the landscape at the end of the day,” said Sean Nixon, the lawyer representing the environment groups, in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

EDIT

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/oil-sands-project-moves-forward/

[imdjh]

1. by fuel oil, I'm assuming that they mean it can't be used for gasoline

So this would free up some of the oil being used to heat homes. I used to have oil heat and it was much better than the electric I have now. I used 100 gallons per year, at 86¢/gallon and that's in Florida. I can only imagine what people in Montana use and when diesel was over $4/gallon it had to be a hit.