Paving the way for driverless trucks
Robots are moving into the oilpatch amid job, safety concerns
The 400-tonne heavy haulers that rumble along the roads of northern Alberta’s oilsands sites are referred to in Fort McMurray as “the biggest trucks in the world,” employing thousands of operators to drive the massive rigs through the mine pits.
Increasingly, however, the giant trucks are capable of getting around without a driver. Indeed, self-driving trucks are already in use at many operations in the province, although they are still operated by drivers while the companies test whether the systems can work in northern Alberta’s variable climate. That is about to change. Suncor Energy Inc., Canada’s largest oil company, confirmed this week it has entered into a five-year agreement with Komatsu Ltd., the Japanese manufacturer of earthmoving and construction machines, to purchase new heavy haulers for its mining operations north of Fort McMurray. All the new trucks will be “autonomous-ready,” meaning they are capable of operating without a driver, Suncor spokesperson Sneh Seetal said.
The move to driverless trucks comes as Suncor and its competitors in the oilsands look for opportunities to cut costs and boost productivity, an effort that has intensified amid the yearlong plunge in oil prices. The steep fall in prices has already forced the sector as a whole to lay off thousands, with Suncor itself letting go 1,000 people this year.
Driverless trucks aren’t new to the resource industry. Mining giants Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton Ltd. use them at many of their operations, and oilsands producers see driverless trucks as an obvious way to boost productivity.
For Suncor’s roughly 1,000 heavyhaul truck operators, however, the prospect of driverless trucks has raised more immediate fears of significant job losses.
“It’s very concerning to us as to what the future may hold,” said Ken Smith, president of Unifor Local 707A, which represents 3,300 Suncor employees. Smith said Suncor has signed agreements to purchase 175 driverless trucks.
Suncor has been testing “autonomous haulage systems” in its oilsands mining operations since 2013 to determine whether the GPS-assisted trucks can work year-round in Alberta, Seetal said, adding the company expects to make a decision in 2017 on whether to fully bring in the system, with implementation spread out over several years.
“It ’s not fantasy,” Suncor’s chief financial officer Alister Cowan told investors at an RBC Capital Markets conference in New York last week. He said the company is working to replace its fleet of heavy haulers with automated trucks “by the end of the decade.”
“That will take 800 people off our site,” Cowan said of the trucks. “At an average (salary) of $200,000 per person, you can see the savings we’re going to get from an operations perspective.”
A wider push to automate various functions in the energy industry is already underway. For example, Canada’s largest drillers, Precision Drilling Corp. and Ensign Energy Services Ltd., use high-tech drilling rigs capable of moving autonomously between oil wells throughout North America.
Nor is the use of autonomous trucks likely not confined to Suncor, although companies are reluctant to confirm plans.
Imperial Oil Ltd. spokesperson Pius Rolheiser would not say whether his company was testing the trucks at the company’s Kearl oilsands mine — which is weeks away from doubling its production capacity to 220,000 barrels per day. “While Imperial doesn’t discuss specific plans, we do as a matter of practice look at all new and emerging technologies and their potential to enhance safety and effectiveness of our operations.”
Similarly, at oilsands miner Shell Canada Ltd. “auto-
An autonomous truck still requires people to load it
mated hauling opportunities is something we are exploring, but we have no specific timeline for it,” spokesperson Cameron Yost said in an email.
Unifor’s Smith said he expected that if Suncor began pulling drivers from its “autonomous-ready” trucks, other oilsands mine operators would follow suit and thousands of jobs would be eliminated.
He also said Unifor members were concerned about their safety if Suncor phases in driverless trucks working along side trucks with drivers before going fully autonomous. “We’d like to see how it’s working in other places, exactly if other people are blending the two types of equipment on the same job site,” Smith said.
Seetal said Suncor was still working through its pilot project and had not made a decision on whether to implement a fully autonomous system. “If we decide to go that route, we would absolutely work through how we could look for redeployment opportunities for our employees and we expect there would be some changes to skill sets,” she said.
“An autonomous truck still requires people to load it, to maintain the roads and to make the technology work,” she added.