The Kearl Oil Sands Project is an

oil sands Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and wate ...

mine in the Athabasca Oil Sands region at the Kearl Lake area, about north of

Fort McMurray Fort McMurray ( ) is an urban service area in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in Alberta, Canada. It is located in northeast Alberta, in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands, surrounded by boreal forest. It has played a significan ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. The project is being developed in three phases with the first phase completed mid-2013.

Project description

The development is an

open-pit mining Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mini ...

operation, which will be developed in three stages. At the first stage it will produce approximately , with later expansions to more than . It uses a froth treatment technology producing blended bitumen which will be transported to the

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city ancho ...

area by

Enbridge Enbridge Inc. is a multinational pipeline and energy company headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Enbridge owns and operates pipelines throughout Canada and the United States, transporting crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids. ...

's pipeline system.

Diluent A diluent (also referred to as a filler, dilutant or thinner) is a diluting agent. Certain fluids are too viscous to be pumped easily or too dense to flow from one particular point to the other. This can be problematic, because it might not be ...

would be provided from Edmonton through the Inter Pipeline owned long diameter pipeline supplying the Athabasca Oil Sands Project. The Kearl oil sands facilities would be connected with this pipeline by a long new branch. At the first stage the development would involve capital spending of about billion, with the final estimate being highly dependent on the final upgrading option selected. An engineering, procurement, and construction management contract for the first phase was awarded to AMEC while Fluor Corp. is responsible for the development of infrastructure and facilities. When ExxonMobil proposed the Kearl project in 1997, estimated recoverable bitumen resources were 1.2 to . Later revisions place the actual established reserves at over (Energy Resources Conservation Board 2010). The development is located on the following oil-sands leases: *Leases 6 and 87, in which Imperial holds 100 percent of the mining rights. Areas deemed suitable for surface mining are primarily in the western part of Lease 6 and the northwestern part of Lease 87 (Imperial Oil, ExxonMobil 2009–07). *Lease 36 and 31A, in which ExxonMobil Canada holds 100% of the mining rights.

Ownership

Imperial Oil Resources owns 70% of the project and ExxonMobil Canada Ltd. owns 30%.

Regulatory agencies

*Energy Resources Conservation Board

Criticism

Sierra Legal launched legal action in Canadian federal courts to overturn the

Department of Fisheries and Oceans Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO; french: Pêches et Océans Canada, MPO), is a department of the Government of Canada that is responsible for developing and implementing policies and programs in support of Canada's economic, ecological and sc ...

regulatory approval (Ecojustice Canada 2007-03-30). They said that the joint federal-Alberta regulatory panel "failed to do its job" when it gave conditional approval to the $7 billion Kearl

open-pit mine Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock (geology), rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a Borrow pit, b ...

. They argued that a full environmental review must take place before the federal government decides whether the project should proceed. After a joint federal-provincial panel reviewed and upheld the original decision, a key water permit was reinstated, pending approval from Imperial's board of directors. Delayed again in response to the 2008 fall in oil prices, Imperial Oil decided in May 2009 to proceed with the project, taking advantage of the soft local economy to cut costs. The

Alberta Federation of Labour The Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL) is the Alberta provincial trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the condit ...

criticised the plan's lack of an

upgrader An upgrader is a facility that upgrades bitumen (extra heavy oil) into synthetic crude oil. Upgrader plants are typically located close to oil sands production, for example, the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta, Canada or the Orinoco tar sands in ...

, as "that's where the real jobs are", referring to the intent to pipe

diluted bitumen Dilbit (diluted bitumen) is a bitumen diluted with one or more lighter petroleum products, typically natural-gas condensates such as naphtha. Diluting bitumen makes it much easier to transport, for example in pipelines. Per the Alberta Oil Sands B ...

south for upgrading. Residents of

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyomi ...

and

Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columb ...

have criticized the plan to transport oversized loads of prefabricated parts of oil extraction "modules" over U.S. Route 12 along the narrow curving byways of the Clearwater and Lochsa River of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, over Lolo Pass, through

Missoula Missoula ( ; fla, label=Salish language, Séliš, Nłʔay, lit=Place of the Small Bull Trout, script=Latn; kut, Tuhuⱡnana, script=Latn) is a city in the U.S. state of Montana; it is the county seat of Missoula County, Montana, Missoula Cou ...

, Montana, and into Alberta.

Coronavirus outbreak

On April 15, 2020, an outbreak of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickly ...

was linked to Kearl by the provincial government; by April 20, at least twenty cases have been attributed to the site by

Alberta Health Services Alberta Health Services (AHS) which is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta is the single health authority for the Canadian province of Alberta and the "largest integrated provincial health care system" in Canada. AHS delivers medical care on beh ...

. On April 18, BC's

Interior Health Interior Health is a regional health authority in British Columbia. It is one of the five publicly-funded regional health authorities, serving the southern Interior region of British Columbia. Facilities As of 2020 Interior Health operates ...

and the

Saskatchewan Health Authority The Saskatchewan Health Authority is the single health region of the province of Saskatchewan. It is a health authority providing direct and contracted health services including primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary care, home and communit ...

(in particular, residents of northwest Saskatchewan) issued advisories of self-isolation for staff returning from interprovincial travel to the region and their close contacts.

Kearl Module Transportation Project

Mammoet Mammoet (, Dutch for Mammoth) is a privately held Dutch company specializing in engineered heavy lifting and transport of oversized and heavy objects. History Mammoet’s history started on 13 May 1807 in the Netherlands, when Dutch entrepr ...

, a developer and user of

Self Propelled Modular Transporter The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhood ...

s is using SPMTs (14 Line 16' Wide Goldhofer Hydraulic Platform Trailer) in conjunction with Class 8 Tractors to transport modules (deemed "oversized loads") of oil extraction parts on the "Kearl Module Transportation Project" from the

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

of Lewiston,

, through the U.S. states of Idaho and Montana to the Kearl Oil Sands Project.

References

External links

Kearl Boundary - Google MapsProposed module transport and required road and utility modifications
{{ExxonMobil Athabasca oil sands Oil fields of Alberta ExxonMobil oil and gas fields Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo Bituminous sands of Canada