OTCPK:ICPVF - Post by User
Comment by
EagleShineon Jan 11, 2019 9:25am
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Post# 29217482
RE:RE:RE:RE:Alberta at its best
RE:RE:RE:RE:Alberta at its bestOil sands mining operations in northern Alberta continually recycle over 78-86 per cent of the water they use. Dapper1 wrote:
I'd be careful about including abundance of fresh water. Alberta is dry land and has very little excess water for use in new upgrader/refineries. The Athabasaca is totally used as we speak and not a drop extra exists. The North Sask is primarily reserved for municipal use and growth...very little extra for industry. Upgraders and refiining of heavy oil requires huge amounts of make-up water for use as cooling water and hydrogen production. You can replace most of the cooling water demand with Air Cooling, but that increases Capex by about 30%. So you increase the cost of a middle sized upgrader/refinery from a nominal $15B to $20B. This deacreases the ROI fron a minimum acceptable of 15% to a high risk 10%. There is only one river in Alberta which can support large scale upgrading/refining and that is the Peace River. However this requires a costly P/L to and from. I would always state in my studies of new upgrader/refining projects, that make sure you have sufficient fresh water souces available and can get an envoronmental permit for it. Pehaps this will eventually fit in with the Nortern Gateway P/L corridor.