Power plant, upgrader near finish line
By Dave Cooper, Edmonton Journal October 26, 2010 7:50 AM Be the first to post a comment
EDMONTON – Work at the Capital Region’s two major industrial projects, worth about $8 billion and employing thousands of skilled contract workers, is almost complete.
And work on the next major project, the North West Upgrading plant near Redwater, won’t begin until spring at the earliest if it’s approved before the end of the year.
South of Wabamun Lake, the $1.9-billion, 450-megawatt Keephills 3 high-tech coal-fired power plant is in its early commissioning stages, with combustion and electrical transmission testing underway.
The number of contract workers has fallen steadily, from 1,800 to fewer than 600 this month as more and more of the operation is turned over to joint owners Capital Power and TransAlta Utilities.
“Basically we are turning on things to make sure they work. And we will be producing power and running the plant before we go online into the provincial power grid,” spokesman Mike Long said.
That could be later this spring, between April and June.
Near Fort Saskatchewan, work on Shell Canada’s $6-billion Scotford Upgrader expansion is also winding down from a high of 5,500 contract workers to several hundred.
“We are in the pre-commission stage, testing all the units,” spokesman Randy Provencial said. “There are thousands of valves to test, pressure points on piping. We are in that process with the first unit right now.”
Shell will bring on the utilities and support unit first, then probably the hydrogen manufacturing unit. Only later will the units linked to oil production come on.
“There are five blocks within the upgrader expansion. So think of five city blocks with two dozen houses on each, and each of those must be tested,” he said.
Shell aims to have a “smooth and flawless” startup early next year.
The upgrader will add 100,000 barrels per day of oil to the market, raising Scotford’s total production of synthetic crude to 255,000 bpd, much of which is sent next door to the Shell refinery.
Earlier this month, Shell withdrew its regulatory application to build a 400,000-bpd upgrader expansion, but said it would spend $2 billion in the future to further enlarge its Muskeg River and Jackpine mines and production at its Scotford refinery as well as expand upgrader output.
However, the firm signalled last winter that it would be focusing on conventional oil production in other areas of the world.
The Keephills and Scotford projects were selected last year for new carbon capture and storage technologies.
The Alberta and federal governments announced $779 million in funding over 15 years to help kick-start the Pioneer Project, which will capture a stream of gas from Keephills 3 (K3) and store one million tonnes a year underground in liquid form. In addition, using super-critical combustion, the new K3 power plant will emit 24-per-cent less carbon dioxide per megawatt hour (MWh) than four coal plant units that are expected to be retired in the near future by other producers.
Shell received $865 million for its CO2 capture and storage project, which send gas from Scotford into storage deep underground or into a planned carbon pipeline for use in enhancing oilfield output.
