138 comments on Update on Megaproject Megaproject
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138 comments on Update on Megaproject Megaproject
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In answering my own question, my hunch would be, that the nature of oil sands projects might suggest that the Wiki Page should have not only a column for Peak Production, but, also a column for each stage. Nexen's Long Lake comes on next year (6 month delay) at 60kbd, but, the peak will only come more than several years from now. Contrast this with Nexen's North Sea Project, Buzzard, which although it had a few problems ramped towards peak production pretty quickly after first coming on line.
Gregor
I agree that tar sands projects represent the "long tail" of the composite ramp-up project - I've been amazed at the slow ramp-up of the ones I've looked at. But ramp-up is a more general issue - tar-sands is just a small (albeit extreme) case of it. My feeling is that we are going to have to have to try to get the largest sample we can manage of projects where we know both the first oil date and the date at which we reach plateau, construct a suitable estimated convolution function out of that sample, and then apply it to the new capacity estimates we have.
It's an important issue on which I will focus once I have some confidence that the lists are reasonably complete and correct. At the moment, the gross totals are still changing enough that I'm not ready to worry about the ramp-up issues.
Thanks for your help btw! Feel free to create an account over there so we can see your name in the history.
I prefer your use of "tar" sands rather than the preceeding designation as "oil" sands.
Thanks for the reply, Stuart. When doing further work therefore on the tar sands projects, I will enter the expected peak production rate in the "Peak" column. As opposed to entering merely the expected production rate from the intial stage. (Wiki instructions: "Peak: maximum production expected (thousand barrels/day)."). Based on your remarks, you can then figure out how to handle the Long Tail, as you call it, of these staged projects in the sands.
So for example, I have Long Lake coming on next year with the figure of 60Kb/d entered in the "Peak" column, as their initial stage. I will change that therefore to the expected Peak rate, which, according to Nexen will eventually be about 240Kb/d.
Gregor
If the company breaks the overall development into separate phases with dates and production rates for each, we generally put each phase in as a separate project.
Without meaning to harp on about it - Longlake won't actually be getting 60 kpd of upgraded crude until mid 2009 according to its website (www.opticanada.com). 2.5 Years from first steam through to full capacity of upgraded product.
It is a long wait but I am in for the long run :)
Hi O.K,
I'm not sure that I understand your post completely, but, all guidance from both Nexen and OPTI now has Long Lake producing fully upgraded Synthetic Crude sometime starting in the back-half of 2008. Bitumen production has already started though at a very minimal level. The central problem with the Long Lake project so far has been the shortage of labor to complete the Upgrader. In my opinion there will be a final hurdle for this project to overcome next year: and that is their unique gassification/recycling process, aka "OrCrude." What I imply here is that we have not seen this process actually work, yet.
Fingers crossed.
Gregor