Canada’s Suncor Energy has said it will spend C$20.6 billion on an expansion scheme that will make it the biggest producer in the oil sands of northern Alberta.
Suncor’s board of directors gave the go-ahead for the Voyageur project, a 200,000 barrel-a-day expansion of the company’s already massive oil sands operations near Fort McMurray, Alberta. Voyageur will boost output to 550,000 barrels a day when complete in 2012.
The project is the latest of more than C$100 billion worth of plans to tap the oil sands to feed demand from U.S. refiners for Canadian oil.
Suncor has been planning Voyageur since 2003, but has held off committing to the expansion so it could firm up its planning and avoid the multibillion-dollar budget overruns that have plagued earlier expansions by the company and its rivals.
So its lets mine Alberta flat, no matter what happens to the climate.
Reference to the above article, I would like to share my opinion and vision about the future of Oil industry in Canada in general.
I am Frederick David, a newly arrived professional Senior Instrumentation and Control Systems Engineer here in Calgary. I came from Singapore where I lived, worked and had family for the past 15 years. I was head hunted by an Oil and Gas consulting firm back in the year 2006 and was eventually short-listed to qualify for a position here in Calgary where I landed last July 15. I believe there will be lots of foreign talents that will be benefitted from this sudden boom in the Oil Sands industry here in Alberta province and the influx of both skilled workers and professionals are expected within the next few years to come. This will in turn create a massive increase in migrants here in the long term run. It would also affect the very inner fabric of Canadian society as the presence of multi-racial ethnics group will add a brand new flavour into Canada’s existing ones too. All in ll this really sounds good in general. However, I hope the law enforcing authorities in Canada will watch out and step up to increase their vigilance on the possibility of increase in crime rate due to a probable introduction of inevitable unpleasant elements brought about by the presence of foreigners here.