Jacobs Engineering Wins Services Contract for Canadian Thermal Oil Facility from Undisclosed Oil and Gas Major

---

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Late last month, Jacobs Engineering Group Incorporated (NYSE:JEC) (Pasadena, California) announced that it had won a contract from a leading oil and gas firm to provide engineering design services for the latter's new thermal oil facility in Lac la Biche County in Alberta. So far, the name of the awarding company and the value of the contract have not been disclosed.

Under the terms of the contract, Jacobs will provide design, engineering and procurement services for the in-situ oil sands central processing facility, which has a production capacity of 40,000 barrels per day. Engineering for the project will begin this month, and Jacobs expects to control about 40% of its activities from its office in Mumbai, India.

Lac la Biche County is located in the northern region of Alberta, home to the Athabasca oil sands deposits. The oil sands of Canada contain vast reserves of economically recoverable oil, and with estimated reserves of 173 billion barrels of oil, the area is the largest oil reserve in the world after Saudi Arabia's reserve.

Current production of oil from the oil sands is about 1 million barrels of oil per day, but by 2020, this is expected to have grown to nearly 4 million barrels per day. Even at these levels of extraction, the reserves are expected to be productive for more than 100 years.

Although the oil and gas company that awarded the contract to Jacobs has not been named, a review of the Lac la Biche listing of oil sands development projects reveals several projects in this sector. Among these are the thermal recovery projects operated by EnCana Corporation (NYSE:ECA) (Calgary, Alberta) at Foster Creek and Christina Lake, and the steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) project operated by Statoil Canada Limited (Ottawa, Ontario), the Canadian subsidiary of Statoil ASA (NYSE:STO) (Stavanger, Norway).

The Statoil project covers four fields containing an estimated total of 2.2 billion barrels of bitumen. The project involves drilling horizontal pairs of wells, with steam injected into the upper horizontal well. This heats the bitumen, making it more fluid. The condensate and heated bitumen are then drained by gravity to the lower horizontal well, where it is pumped to the surface. The project is expected to begin production in the second half of 2010, and estimated production from at least two of the four fields is estimated to be 40,000 barrels per day.

Both EnCana projects are SAGD projects. The Foster Creek project is currently in operation. The Christina Lake project, however, has a third phase scheduled to start in 2011. The project has a planned production capacity of 40,000 barrels per day, which also fits the profile of the contract awarded to Jacobs. For related news item, see November 13, 2009, article - Suncor Awards EPCM Contract to Jacobs Engineering for Canadian Oil Sands Project.

View Plant Profile - 1052881 1053611
View Project Report - 56000508 56000597 56001484 56000920 56001485 56001511 56001654 56001656 56001661 56001681 56001678

Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy related markets. For more than 26 years, Industrial Info has provided plant and project opportunity databases, market forecasts, high resolution maps, and daily industry news.