AM-93-72 THE ADVANTAGES OF SYNTHETIC CRUDES TO REFINERS

Description:

Suncor Inc. 3 Oil Sands Group (OSG) is in the business of converting oil sands into synthetic crude and other high quality petroleum products. The company holds a number of leases on the Athabasca Oil Sands deposit, which is one of four in northern Alberta. The Athabasca deposit contains more recoverable oil than Saudi Arabia, the United States and Western Europe combined. With existing technology, it is economically feasible to process approximately 75 - 20% of this reserve, which represents 240 billion barrels of light, sweet synthetic crude. In 1992, the combined cumulative production of the two synthetic crude plants on the reserve (Suncor and Syncrude) passed the 1 billion barrel mark, which, while representing a great deal of oil, leaves the reserve basically untapped. The two plant produce approximately 270 thousand barrels of light, sweet, resid-free crude per day. This represents 16% of Canada’s total petroleum production and 28% of all light and medium crudes processed by Canadian refineries.