In an attempt to shed further light on the oilsands operations at Foster Creek on the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR), Cenovus took a group of local media on a tour of the site on July 5. We set aside our competitive natures and boarded a bus with fellow local media from radio and television stations in the area and headed north, armed with baskets of chocolates and complimentary donuts.
Because Foster Creek is located on the CLAWR, access is restricted to authorized personnel only, unlike some other oilsands operations in the Lakeland area, where public access is permitted.
Along with the inherent dangers of touring an oilsands site, Foster Creek and other operations on the CLAWR also carry the dangers involved with Air Force weapons training.
While administration worked on our day passes, we received safety tutorials and wrote an exam to prove we had paid attention, and wouldn't wander off and fall pray to bears, ammunition, or unsupervised oil drilling machinery.
Though we did not discover any undetonated bombs or hear sonic booms from low-flying aircraft, our tour did provide us with plenty of opportunities to see wildlife, including bears, deer, wolves, and an owl, which we were specifically told to not feed or harass.
Because wildlife are typically left undisturbed on the CLAWR, the animals pay little or no attention to humans.
Once on site, we were given a little bit of insight into Foster Creek operations.
Foster Creek started in 1996 and is one of the fastest growing oilsands operations in the area, with plans to expand production over the next six years, according to Cenovus representatives.
Cenovus currently has over 160 wells producing more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day. Planned expansions are projected to increase capacity to more than 200,000 barrels per day by 2017.
The expansion is happening in phases. Foster Creek currently operates phases A-E. Construction of phase F is already underway, while G and H are still in the works, with plans for completion by 2017.
Not only is expansion projected to produce greater amounts of oil, but the construction and operation of the new phases will also create more jobs for people in the area, according to Randy Penny, Cenovus team lead for Primrose Operations.
“Following construction, there will definitely be increased opportunities for full-time, long term, operational positions,” he said.
In terms of technology, Foster Creek employs some of the most advanced in the industry, according to representatives.
Foster Creek operations use roughly 2.3 barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced, which is currently one of the lowest ratios among oil producing companies. And, according to the company, only five per cent of all water used is fresh – though fresh water is only used for drinking and cleaning, not oil production. More notably, all water, including brackish used in production, is processed and reused for steam.
Though carbon dioxide and other gases are emitted into the air through many processes, including steam production, the company is using technology to reduce these emissions.
We were later introduced to a little known fact about working on an oil rig – the sheer number of calories required to keep a worker going throughout their exhausting shift. We dined on an overwhelming feast of chicken Kiev, ribs, potato skins, cabbage rolls, and massive piles of fettuccine alfredo before gearing up to go see what really goes on out on the rigs.
Gearing up itself was a challenge. While Robb Hunter, a particularly tall local radio personality, struggled to fit into a small set of blue safety scrubs, we picked out rubber boots and blue hard hats with ‘visitor' printed across the brim, so if our ridiculous outfits didn't give us away as tourists, those actually out there working wouldn't mistake us for anything else. All plans to slip away from the tour to explore on our own – not that we'd had any – were reluctantly destroyed.
After that, we boarded the bus, leaving the Bear's Den camp for the wilds of the CLAWR, visiting wedge wells, construction zones, and other facilities, where we learned a few key things – hard hats can get in the way of taking decent photos, rubber boots are fully capable of stripping off a few layers of tender skin from the calves of those forced to wear them, and the heat in northern Alberta is made exponentially worse by hard hats and full-body blue suits.
During the tour, we were shown the Co-Gen plant, which captures the exhaust from primary steam production and uses the heat to create steam for the SAGD oil recovery process. There, Rod Buchan, the operator who was leading the plant tour, grabbed a disposable coffee cup and turned a few knobs on what was basically the most expensive and extensive cappuccino machine we had ever seen. He opened a small door, stuck the cup inside, and there it was, bubbling and steaming in his hand, the mother lode – a small cup of what Cenovus had come all this way to find – oil.
It looked like what we had assumed oil would look like – black, viscous, kind of smelly. It also had recently been sitting at about 165 C before it had been drawn into the cup, so we naturally resisted the urge to poke it. Apparently the safety seminar had paid off.
We giggled nervously while trying to photograph this little cup of black gold because we had been told the building was so sensitive to light as a safety precaution that flash photography would convince the sensors there was a fire and shut everything down. Accidentally setting off a flash could set back Cenovus operations and cost untold dollars – and probably result in whichever member of the media responsible having to walk back to Bonnyville.
Our dreams of snatching the cup and dashing for the CLAWR border to sell it on the black market were crushed, upon being informed a coffee cup of oil was only worth about a quarter.
However, looking up at the massive vats holding millions of coffee cups worth of oil, we could see the quarters would quickly add up.
Tromping along the oil rigs was damaging, not only to our dreams of making a tidy profit, but also to our blue suits. After stripping out of them, most of us found the hard work of touring the site had virtually destroyed them, tearing up the insides of the pant legs. We could only imagine how hard it would be to spend more than a few hours up there, doing more than wandering around taking photographs.
We changed back into our street clothes, partook in the basket of chocolate once more, and made a 20-minute detour because Hunter had lost his shoes along the way, and exhausted, sunk back into our chairs, turned to the windows, and took up an interrupted quest to see as many bears as we could before making it back to relatively bear-free Bonnyville.
The tour provided us with plenty of insight into the Foster Creek operations, but there is still much to learn for both public and industry about oil production.
We can only hope all oil companies take the open and transparent route when it comes to providing the public with information about their activities.
