Alberta Premier Rachel Notley cut the ribbon that marked the official opening of an oil sands expansion project near Fort McMurray on Wednesday. The new project is expected to produce 20,000 bpd of oil by mid-2018, thanks to a US$1.64 billion (2 billion Canadian dollars) investment. Japan Petroleum Exploration Co (Japex) and Nexen Energy ULC—a wholly owned subsidiary of China’s CNOOC— started last month the production of ultra-heavy crude oil from the Hangingstone Oil Sands Project. Japex and Nexen launched production using the Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) method, at a current bitumen production rate of 1,000 bpd. After wells get switched to full production mode, the companies expect production volume at the Hangingstone project to reach 20,000 bpd by the second half of 2018. Japex’s subsidiary, Japan Canada Oil Sands Limited (Jacos), holds a 75- percent interest in the project and is its operator, while Nexen owns the other […]