Foster creek oil sands expansion project
The earliest possible sanction decision for the $1.2-billion to $1.3-billion project would be the second half of 2020, followed by first steam in 2025. Cenovus is also considering Phase H at its Foster Creek project, which would add 40,000 bbls/d of production capacity for an estimated capital cost of $600 million to $650 million. The Athabasca oil sands deposit is the largest oil sands deposit in Alberta-Canada which contains about 1.7 trillion barrels (270×109 m3) of bitumen in-place. In the Athabasca oil sand, most of the bitumen deposits are found within a single contiguous reservoir, the lower cretaceous McMurray Formation. The oil at Foster Creek sits about 450 metres below the surface — so deep that we have to use technology, called steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), to drill and pump the oil to the surface. Foster Creek began as a pilot project in 1997 and in 2001 became the first commercial oil sands project to use SAGD technology.