RE:RE:RE:RE:RE:Good things take timeNexen Long Lake was a complete screw up not only from the reservoir side but from the processing side. CNOOC got royaly screwed before they started purchase and didn't know it. A few years before I headed a comprehensive study for Suncor into developing various properties, from a precessing cost perspective. Long Lake (Cheecham) was the by far the worst. We were flabergasted when Nexen purchased it. Because of poor a reservoir, limited fresh water availability and prospects of high NG fuel prices (which were severly impacting SAGD profitability) they selected an unproven OPTI gasification process. This is method which would enhance economics by simultaneously generating oil products as well as a syngas (CO & H2). The syngas would be used as fuel for SAGD rather than NG as most operators use. The process never worked as planned as gasifiers are high maintenace and have low service factors and an additional train of very costly gasifiers to increase on stream factors,was not installed.
Just a side note. they did sucessfully show that you can produce syn gas (CO & H2) in large volumes from formation water and vitually eliminate fdesh water use. Perhaps this shouls be considered foer Grey Hydrogen rather than SMR or electrolosis.