BlackRock Ventures Plans Oil Sands Development in Alberta

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). BlackRock Ventures Incorporated (Calgary, Alberta) (TSE:BVI) is planning to construct facilities to produce crude oil from oil sands near Cold Lake, Alberta. BlackRock is presently in the permitting phase and expects governmental approval by the second quarter of 2003. This Orion EOR Project will utilize steam assisted gravity drainage technology to extract bitumen from the ground.

The project will be constructed in two phases. Phase one will produce ten million barrels per day at a cost of $95 million, and is expected to go on-line in late 2005. Phase two will expand production by ten million barrels per day and will go on-line in late 2006. Each phase will involve twenty four pairs of steam- injection production wells, an upgrader, and a steam generation plant capable of producing a thirty thousand barrel of cold water to steam equivalent.

The facility will be located just three miles from one of Enbridge's crude oil pipelines. In its application to the government, BlackRock proposed developing four sections of its eight section lease and anticipated the recovery of over 190 million barrels of reserves over the thirty year lifetime of the Orion Project.

This project is one of many in the area designed to increase crude oil production from oil sands up to 3.48 million barrels per day by 2013. The total estimated cost for this development is $37 billion. IIR is presently tracking nearly thirty-five oil sands projects in Alberta, Canada as part of its North American Industrial Database.