BA Energy Proceeds with Underground Work at $2.25 Billion Heartland Upgrader

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). BA Energy, Incorporated (Calgary, Alberta), a business unit of Value Creation Group (Calgary, Alberta), has advanced its Heartland Upgrader project past the site clearing and grading phase and is presently working on the underground piping in preparation to begin driving the pilings next spring. Located approximately 60 kilometers northeast of Edmonton, Alberta, the Heartland Upgrader project is designed to convert diluted bitumen into a higher value light synthetic crude oil. The upgrader will be able to take advantage of Canada’s large resource oil sands resource and have the flexibility to produce high value light or medium synthetic crude ranging from 28 to 40 API.

BA Energy has awarded the engineering and construction contract for the first phase of the upgrader to Jacobs Canada, Incorporated (Calgary, Alberta). The first phase of the project will have a capacity to process 75,500 barrels per day of oil sands bitumen into synthetic crude oil and is slated for completion in the second quarter of 2008. The completion timing for the first phase was pushed out from late 2007, due to construction resources, such as fabrication services, becoming scarcer as each new mega-project in the oil sands patch is announced. As it stands now, there are three major fabrication shops in the area and their time and space are currently at a premium.

Problems such as this have also forced BA Energy to reconsider the construction strategy to be used in their second and third phases. At the present time BA Energy is planning to construct two additional mirror phases of 75,500 barrels per day of additional processing capacity a piece. The phases were to be completed in succession in the years 2010 and 2012. BA Energy is now considering combining these phases into a single phase that will begin construction right on the heels of the first phase, so as not to lose construction labor resources, which also happen to be at a premium at the moment. Either way it plays out, BA Energy will be a major player in the synthetic crude sector when the Heartland Upgrader in completed.

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