Connacher gets approval for Great Divide expansion

Conacher assets, including Great Divide.
From  http://www.energy-pedia.com 

Connacher has received ERCB approval for its Great Divide expansion project. The plan for the SAGD project is to add 24,000 bbl/d to the current production capacity of 10,000 bbl/d.

Osum gets approval for Taiga project near Cold Lake

Taiga cross section stolen from the Osum website.

Osum Oil Sands Corp. (my personal favourite oil sand company name) has received authorization from the ERCB to build its Taiga project 25km north of Cold Lake. The plan is for a 35,000 barrel per day SAGD project, the first 10,000 barrel per day phase of which will supposedly startup in 2013.

Osum is a private company with a bunch of deep pocketed partners, including Warburg Pincus, Blackstone Capital Partners, Camcor Partners Inc., Kern Partners, Goldman Sachs and the Singaporean and South Korean sovereign wealth funds. Perhaps its most attractive assets are the Grossmont carbonates it owns with Laracina, which contain a massive amount of bitumen but have yet to be effectively extracted. Taiga is clastic, not carbonates, and so is a much more conventional oil sands project, to the degree that any oil sand project can be conventional. Osum also has a pretty slick website that moves and bounces and stuff.

Shell gets conditional approval for carbon capture scheme

The Scotford upgrader.
Picture from Natural Resources Canada. That's right,
I'm stealing pictures from the government now.

Shell has been given conditional approval from the ERCB to capture carbon dioxide from its Scotford upgrader near Edmonton. That's a first for the industry. The project is planned to cost $1.35 billion dollars and capture 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year. That apparently includes $745 million over 15 years from the Alberta government and $120 million from the federal clean energy fund. The rest of the cost will presumably be split between Shell and its Scotford partners - Chevron and Marathon, each with 20% stakes.