Alberta’s booming economy creating problems for Shell

April 29, 2006 by admin.

Judy Monchuk
The Canadian Press

Saturday, April 29, 2006

CREDIT: Larry MacDougal, Canadian Press
PRESIDENT: Clive Mather, president and CEO of Shell Canada, talks to the media after the company’s annual general meeting in Calgary on Friday.

CALGARY - Shell Canada Ltd. (TSX:SHC) is reassessing projected costs of its oilsands development to account for labour shortages and soaring expenses in Alberta’s booming economy, the energy giant’s president said Friday….

Shell had two major projects come on stream earlier this year: upgrades to refineries in Montreal and on the outskirts of Edmonton which will process ultra low-sulphur diesel….(Full Story — off-site)
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Note by folc.ca: Rising constructions costs are not all that plagues Shell and other oil producers.
“Ultra low-sulphur diesel” (ULSD) means more stringent removal of sulphur. That is about a 97% reduction of the sulphur contained in low-sulphur diesel (LSD). The very large reduction in sulphur content is based on the latest US EPA standard. (LSD sulphur content is 500ppm vs. a ULSD sulphur content of 15ppm)* The new standard has been adhered to for a number of years in countries other than Canada. Tarsands crude contains about 5 percent sulphur by mass (about 5.7kg per barrel), of which virtually all must be stripped before fuel produced from bitumen may be put on the market. Where will all of that waste sulphur go in a saturated world market? Will HAZCO dump it into the County of Lamont?

Tarsands oil production was 550,000 bpd in 1995, increased to 1.1 million bpd by 2004 and is expected to rise to 5 million bpd by 2030. We can therefore expect that the Tarsands oil producers will be looking for space to store the major portion of 28,500 tonnes of waste sulphur that will by that time be produced each day.

* Ultra-low sulfur diesel and the new 2006 US EPA regulations
(Canada will follow suit in about 2007)

Total sulphur consumption in the whole world is presently at about 60 million tons each year and not expected to rise much, if at all. By 2001 the world total sulphur inventory (stored waste sulphur) was close to 30 million tons and increasing at the rate of about 11 percent per year. At that rate of growth it will reach 220 million tons by 2030. (Source: Sulphur Surplus in the Making Impacts Refineries (2003), by R.J. Morris, The [US] Sulphur Institute)

Posted in World Sulphur Glut, Sulphur Logistics, Ultra-Low-Sulphur Diesel, Sulphur-Related Construction Costs | Print | No Comments »