Suncor Awards EPCM Contract to Jacobs Engineering for Canadian Oil Sands Project

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Engineering and consulting company Jacobs Engineering Group Incorporated (NYSE:JEC) (Pasadena, California) recently announced that it has secured an engineering, procurement and construction management contract from Suncor Energy Incorporated (NYSE:SU) (Calgary, Alberta) to complete the design basis memorandum and scoping study for the latter's tailings and water transfer projects. The projects form part of the tailings reduction operations (TRO) being implemented for stage 4 of Suncor's Firebag mining, extraction and upgrading unit near Fort McMurray in Alberta. The value of the contract has not been disclosed.

TRO is a new tailings management and reclamation technique developed by Suncor that hastens the settling of water, sand, residual bitumen, and fine clay particles in ponds after extraction of bitumen from oil sands. Clay particles that are less than 44 micrometers in diameter are known as Mature Fine Tailings (MFT) and if unprocessed, can stay suspended in water for centuries, rendering agriculture and surface reclamation impossible. Suncor's TRO technique implements a drying process that enables reclamation of the dry material either in-situ or at a different location. Suncor plans to mix a binding agent called polymer flocculent with the MFT and then deposit the mixture in thin layers over sandy beaches that have shallow slopes. The flocculent combines and sticks to the clay particles causing them to fall out of the suspension. The water separates and flows into a pond from the bottom of the slope while the fines dry on the surface.

Implementation of the technique results in a drier landscape at a faster pace and a shorter timeline. The environmental footprint of tar sands mining is thus effectively reduced. According to Suncor, the MFT settle in about a month, allowing the company to reuse the ponds and water sooner. The separated fines can and have been used as construction material. With the new technique, the reclamation time for a tailing pond can be reduced from the current 40 years to a mere seven to 10 years. Suncor hopes to make large-scale use of TRO starting in 2010. The earlier techniques required Suncor to use larger and more oil sands tailings ponds, while the new treatment will allow the company to reduce its tailings inventories at a faster rate.

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