With the expansion Nabiye project almost complete, Imperial Oil's Cold Lake operations is set to reach a combined production level of approximately 193,000 barrels of oil per day.
Nabiye, which is Dené for Otter, will join four other plants – Leming, Maskaw, Mahihkan and Mahkeses – at the company's Cold Lake operations. Together these facilities, consisting of 4,600 active wells, cover roughly 780 square kilometers of oil sands leases 50 kilometers northwest of Cold Lake.
It was in 2010 when Imperial Oil received regulatory approval to proceed with development of the $2 billion Nabiye project.
After nearly four years of planning research and construction Nabiye is projected to start up production by the end of 2014.
Officials expect the project to reach a production capacity of 40,000 barrels per day, although it won't happen anytime soon.
“It is in the order of a year or two,” said Mark Taylor, acting operations manager at the Cold Lake site. “Whether that is eight months, 12 months, or 16 months, I am not sure, but it is within two years of start up it will peak.”
When Nabiye peaks, Imperial Oil's Cold Lake operations will be producing around 30.65 million liters of oil per day, which is leaps and bounds ahead of the amount the company was producing when it originally came to the region, over five decades ago.
Development of the company's massive site started back in the 1960's when they acquired the leases to the large chunk of land in the region.
In 1966 Imperial Oil officially patented the cyclic steam stimulated (CSS) process, where steam is injected into a well in a heavy oil reservoir to heat up and thin out the oil. The well flow is then reversed and the heated up oil, or bitumen, is pumped up to the surface.
Their first project, Leming, started production in 1975.
“We have been very lucky here with the reserve quality that we have here in Cold Lake. It is amenable to a really exceptional recovery process,” said Taylor. “The CSS fits very well with the resources we have here.”
In 1982 Imperial Oil officials continued to make advancements in oil recovery and patented the steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process. With this system a pair of horizontal wells are drilled parallel into an oil reserve, with one a few meters above the other. High-pressure steam is injected into the upper well to heat the surrounding oil. The oil then drains down into the lower well, where is it pumped back to surface.
“We continue to develop our SAGD knowledge because there is an opportunity to use it at a number of different reservoirs that we hold on these leases, as well as other leases that we hold in the province,” said Taylor.
In 1985 Imperial Oil added two more sites with the Maskwa and Mahihkan projects starting up.
Decades later, after doing research and advancing their technology, the company started up production at a fourth site – Mahkeses.
According to Taylor, the Nabiye facility is a “cookie-cutter, sister plant to Mahkeses,” and includes some of the same technological improvements and advancements the company has made to their system.
One of the most notable advancements Imperial Oil has made is in the way they reuse their water. Originally the facilities in Cold Lake were operating at a ratio of four barrels of fresh water for every one barrel of oil they were producing.
The company has since dropped that ratio of 4:1 all the way down to 0.4:1 with the developments of water reuse technology.
“Now, the water that comes back with the oil, instead of disposing it, we just reuse it. Almost 90 per cent of the water is reused and made into steam,” said Taylor. “We are using 600,000 barrels a day of water. Almost all of that gets cleaned up with water reuse technology. The oil gets separated, the water goes into a big water softener, it gets cleaned up, so that it can go into the generators where it is turned into steam and injected back down the wells again.”
Taylor feels that without this technology the company would not have been able to expand and create Mahkeses and Nabiye, as using strictly fresh water wouldn't have been feasible.
“The water reuse technology that we started developing at Leming in 1975 was critical to the commercial developments because you would just never be able to pull a half a million barrels of fresh water from anywhere and send it once through and have it go away,” said Taylor.
“It is really the enabler to allow us to continue to do this in an environmentally sound manner.”
Along with the water reuse technology, the company has also improved its overall recovery process.
Initially Imperial Oil well pads were working at a recovery rate of around 18 per cent, meaning that they were only pulling 18 per cent of the oil out of their reservoirs.
A simple change of adding a hydrocarbon solvent to their steam has helped improve that rate immensely.
“Adding a solvent into the steam that goes into the ground helps thin the oil a little and makes it flow better and produce better,” explained Taylor.
“Solvent addition to steam is the next horizon as we continue to expand our resource recovery here. Our recovery has gone from the single digit teens to now up over 50 per cent.”
A distinguishing element of both the Mahkeses and Nabiye sites is that they are equipped with two co-generation units that allow them to generate their own power.
The facilities have a large gas turbine; similar to one you would see on a jet engine, but on a much larger scale. This allows each site to produce 170 megawatts of electricity per day.
“We bring air in, we add a hydrocarbon fuel gas, we ignite it, which in turn rotates a turbine,” explained Ron Martens, the Mahkeses plant operations superintendent. “The turbine then rotates a generator which makes power. The hot exhaust created goes off and is turned into steam, which is also used. So it is a very efficient process.”
Both facilities only need 125 megawatts of power to operate, so the company sends the excess power, roughly 45 megawatts back to the provincial power grid for the rest of the province to use.
Along with working on ways to improve their process the company also spends time looking at ways to reduce its environmental footprint.
According to Alana Phelps, Remediation Project Manager with Imperial Oil, the company is constantly working on reclamation projects to redevelop the land they have disturbed.
As of mid-November 61 per cent of disturbed areas at the Cold Lake leases were undergoing some sort of reclamation.
Over the past year reclamation projects have seen the company plant 159,000 tree seedlings. Dating back to 1998 the company has planted over 1.37 million seedlings at reclamation sites across the province.