Syncrude not certain whether plant fire will affect production

By Mike De Souza
CALGARY, Aug 29 (Reuters) - The operator of Canada's largest
synthetic crude project said on Saturday it is investigating the
causes of an early morning fire at an upgrading plant.
Firefighters extinguished the blaze, at Syncrude Canada's
Mildred Lake upgrading complex in northern Alberta, and no one
was injured, said company spokesman Will Gibson in a phone
interview.
The fire broke out a few hours after the province's energy
regulator announced it was shutting in 95 pipelines operated by
Nexen, one of the partners in the project, because of safety
issues identified following a large oil-related spill in July.
But he said it was too soon to know how production would be
affected.
Syncrude is a 326,000 barrel-per-day mining and upgrading
project, at which mined oil sands bitumen is upgraded into
refinery-ready synthetic crude.
The operations are a joint venture of seven partners:
Canadian Oil Sands Ltd COS.TO , Suncor Energy Inc SU.TO ,
Imperial Oil Ltd IMO.TO , Nippon Oil subsidiary Mocal Energy
Ltd 5020.T , Murphy Oil Corp (NYSE:MUR) MUR.N , China's Sinopec
600028.SS , and Nexen, a subsidiary of CNOOC Ltd 0883.HK .
"Production is ongoing at our site," said Gibson. "There is
an area in our upgrading complex that is affected ... but our
operations are continuing in other areas of our upgrader and our
operation as a whole."
Gibson said the company had also restricted access to the
site to Syncrude employees. He added that the fire did not
affect air quality in the region.
Canada's oil and gas industry is facing mounting criticism
from conservation groups about its environmental performance.
Companies are also facing economic challenges because of
slumping oil prices, which have prompted thousands of layoffs in
recent months.
Earlier this month, Syncrude released a presentation that
estimated it was losing about $6 for every barrel of oil it
produces.
The Alberta Energy Regulator is also investigating another
incident in August at Syncrude's Mildred Lake oil sands mine
site, where about 30 blue herons were found dead.