Plant Changes
I asked COS what risk is associated with the recent upgrades to the plant, and are they deploying new technology that has not been used elsewhere. Their response was that all the technology upgrades that are being deployed are technology that is deployed in other mining operations with the exception of the crushers. However the crushers were tested in a full scaled pilot plant for a year. In the upgrade plans, have they incorporated time for the ramp up so that the implementation of the new technology is in full production, yes we should follow their timeline. I asked about design capacity of the new mine trains and they told me that they really have not changed, except that some of the components are larger and allow for increased redundancy and flexibility, this should result in greater reliability. I was under the impression that we were increasing our capacity to produce bitumen. All this should be happening soon, It will be exciting to see the plant running at higher throughput rates.