Project cuts red tape
CNRL bundles 47 wells under one application
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Canada’s largest heavy oil producer, has applied for regulatory approval for 47 wells in northeastern Alberta under a red-tape-cutting pilot program that allows producers to lump multiple activities into one set of paperwork.
The single application posted on the Alberta Energy Regulator’s website this week requests permission to construct, drill, complete and operate 47 heavy oil wells on six multi-well pads and one single-well pad. It also seeks approval to build seven bitumen batteries, access roads and associated gas pipelines for fuel use and transport of associated gas.
The company said all the assets, located about 42 kilometres northwest of Cold Lake, will be managed singularly and construction of later projects may depend on the success of early ones, thus requiring an extended approval term of five years.
Heather Sampson, regulatory co-ordinator for Canadian Natural, said in a letter attached to the application that the single application process launched last year will “improve the effectiveness and efficiency” of stakeholder consultations.
“Combining individual developments in an area enables Canadian Natural and area stakeholders to consider potential development plans for the region over the next five years, which provides the ‘bigger picture,’ and a more effective and fulsome consultation,” she wrote.
The news comes as the AER is scheduled to release results of an investigation on Monday into four flow-to-surface bitumen leaks in the spring of 2013 from Canadian Natural’s Primrose thermal oilsands project in the nearby Cold Lake Weapons Range.
The incident resulted in steaming restrictions and $40 million in cleanup costs for the company, which blamed a faulty oil well drilled by another operator. Even after the company stopped steaming, bitumen emulsion continued to seep up in four separate locations across the company’s acreage for months.
The newly applied-for well pads are about 13 kilometres southwest of Primrose.
Combining individual developments in an area enables Canadian Natural … to consider potential development plans for the region over the next five years …
There, bitumen would be produced using a production technique called CHOPS or cold heavy oil production with sand, where unheated product is pumped to a surface storage tank then trucked to an oil battery for processing.
AER spokeswoman Carrie Rosa said Friday the application is the second under the new program. Suncor Energy Inc. applied last fall under the pilot for an amendment to the previous approval of its proposed Meadow Creek East thermal oilsands project about 45 kilometres south of Fort McMurray.
“Starting with a few projects, the AER is accepting a single application for multiple activities related to a project,” she said. “Currently, the AER looks at applications as single discreet items, even though many applications are for the same project or development. This will allow Albertans, and the AER, to consider the combined environmental impacts of multiple activities associated with a project in one application, which will enhance environmental management.”
The Alberta regulator conducted a play-based pilot project in the Duvernay shale play near Fox Creek which wrapped up last June 30. Rosa said the Canadian Natural application is under a similar but separate program.
Duncan Kenyon, program director of unconventional oil and gas for the environmental Pembina Institute, was surprised to hear about the new program. He said the AER should have issued a public report on pluses and minuses of the earlier pilot before replicating it in other areas of the province.