Suncor News

U.S. and Canadian refiners have turned to North Sea "Forties" crude oil for the first time in seven years in the latest sign of changing global oil flows from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Nearly 2.6 million barrels of the crude are set to arrive at U.S. East Coast ports since February, according to Customs data on Refinitiv Eikon. Some of the oil is likely headed to Canada via pipeline. The light, low-sulfur Forties crudes are blended with others to replace Russian crudes that have been barred from the U.S. and Canada. Prior to the ban, about 50% of all crude from Russian ports that landed in the U.S. went to East Coast refineries, the customs data showed. The tanker Sea Turtle in February discharged 770,000 barrels of Forties and Forties blend crudes in Maine, destined for Suncor Energy.

Dubai's shipbuilding and shiprepair company Drydocks World and Norwegian offshore engineering and construction firm Aker Solutions have established a joint venture to upgrade the Petrojarl Knarr FPSO for Equinor's Rosebank offshore oil and gas field in the UK, the Government of Dubai media office confirmed Friday.The joint venture signed its first contract with FPSO owner Altera Infrastructure to upgrade, refurbish, and electrify the FPSO. The vessel will be redeployed at Rosebank field…

Norway's Aker Solutions will upgrade Altera Infrastructure's Petrojarl  Knarr floating production storage and offloading vessel (FPSO) to be redeployed at Equinor's Rosebank field development, offshore the UK. Petrojarl Knarr was built by Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea and delivered in 2014. It was operating on the Knarr field offshore Norway from 2015 until May 2022.The development concept for the Rosebank field includes the redeployment and reuse of the existing Petrojarl Knarr FPSO owned by Altera.Under a 'substantial' contract with Altera…

Hibernia Management and Development Company Ltd. (HMDC), the operator of the Hibernia platform in the Atlantic Ocean offshore Canada, has reported that a near-miss incident occurred on the platform on October 5, 2022.According to HMDC, as reported to safety regulator CNLOPB, on October 5, the platform's personnel were in the process of completing a pressure test of the high-pressure manifold on the Hibernia Platform. Personnel had closed the upper diverter valve when the valve…

Altera Infrastructure, formerly known as Teekay Offshore, said it has taken delivery of a new shuttle tanker from Samsung Heavy Industries in South Korea.The 148,200 DWT newbuild, Altera Thule, was handed over to Altera on Thursday. The ship's crew is currently on board and preparing for sail away after familiarization, testing and drills, the company said.The Bahamas-registered suezmax will operate on long-term contracts with a group of companies that includes Chevron, Exxon, Husky, Equinor, Suncor and more, to provide shuttle tanker services off Canada's East Coast.

The Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board said on Tuesday that it has laid three charges following a 2018 oil spill off Canada's Atlantic Coast.The board said it laid the charges against Husky Oil Operations Limited for the spill in the White Rose Field. Cenovus Energy has since then acquired Husky.A leaking flowline from the White Rose Field to the SeaRose floating production, storage and offloading unit spilled 250 cubic meters (1,572 barrels) of oil in November, 2018, temporarily shutting down all crude production in the waters of Newfoundland and Labrador.Last month, Cenovus struck a deal with Suncor Energy to decrease its stake in White Rose and raise Suncor's ownership…

In January, Occidental Petroleum announced it had accomplished something no oil company had done before: It sold a shipload of crude that it said was 100% carbon-neutral.While the two-million-barrel cargo to India was destined to produce more than a million tons of planet-warming carbon over its lifecycle, from well to tailpipe, the Texas-based driller said it had completely offset that impact by purchasing carbon credits under a U.N.-sponsored program called CORSIA.Carbon credits…

Norwegian offshore vessel operator Siem Offshore has seen a platform supply vessel contract in Canada terminated almost two years ahead of the expected contract expiration.The company said Friday that its Canadian subsidiary Secunda Canada had received a notice of early termination of the charter party for the vessel Siem Pilot."The original charter period expires in November 2022. Secunda Canada LP will be entitled to an early termination fee," Siem Offshore said. According to available information, the vessel had been on a long-term contract with the Canadian oil company Suncor.Built in 2010, the 88.3 meters long Siem Pilot is a diesel-electric driven supply ship and pipe carrier.

Canada will spend C$320 million ($238.56 million) to support its offshore oil industry in Newfoundland and Labrador, which has struggled as coronavirus pandemic travel restrictions reduced demand, the government said on Friday.The funds are intended to support jobs and to lower greenhouse gas emissions from crude production, and could be used for maintenance, upgrades and environmental services, Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan said St. John's.The money falls short of requests from the industry…

The Hibernia oil platform in Canada was shut after a leakage of drilling and production fluids, the Hibernia Management and Development Co (HMDC) said late Monday.Hibernia sits roughly 315 km (200 miles) east of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. ExxonMobil owns the largest stake in the oil platform, followed by Chevron Canada and Suncor Energy Inc."Water sampling late on July 19, during drill well flow back operations, indicated an exceedance on the produced water discharge…

A fire broke out on Saturday aboard Suncor Energy-operated Terra Nova FPSO offshore Canada, the offshore oil and gas regulator C-NLOPB said.Suncor told C-NLOPB that everyone onboard was accounted for and safe, and that the fire had been extinguished."There are no injuries and we await further information from Suncor as to the extent & their assessment of the cause," the C-NLOPB said Saturday. According to a report by CBC, there are 82 people aboard the FPSO.Per C-NLOPB, there is no gas or crude held onboard the FPSO which has been shut down for maintenance."The facility is not producing at this time,” CNLOPB tweeted on May 30.To remind…

The Hebron oil project off the coast of eastern Canada has produced its first oil, operator Exxon Mobil said on Tuesday, in a boost to Atlantic Canada's output after years of weak crude prices. At its peak Hebron will produce up to 150,000 barrels per day (bpd), Exxon said. It will help Atlantic Canada offshore production climb 44 percent to 307,000 bpd by 2024, according to estimates from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. The platform is located 200 miles (350 kilometres) off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador in depths of 300 feet (92 metres) and the oil field…

Teekay Offshore said it has taken delivery of Beothuk Spirit, the first of three new shuttle tankers to serve East Coast Canada, built in Korea by Samsung Heavy Industries. Heritage Class sister vessels Norse Spirit and Dorset Spirit are scheduled for delivery in the first half of November 2017 and early-2018 respectively. The three Suezmax, DP2 shuttle tankers will provide crude transportation services to the Hibernia, Terra Nova, White Rose and Hebron offshore oil fields located in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador.

The bullish view for Suncor Energy Inc (SU.TO), Cenovus Energy Inc (CVE.TO) and other Canadian energy producers calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by next month to approve a major pipeline expansion to the west coast, boosting sales of land-locked oil sands crude to Asia. But a growing number of shipping brokers and physical oil traders warn that any new influx of oil will hit a bottleneck in Vancouver, because of the port's inability to accept the megaships that dominate oil trade globally. This bottleneck marks one of the more under appreciated hurdles facing Canadian oil sands crude being shipped from its busiest port of Vancouver, these shipping brokers say. Middle Eastern producers already ship oil ship to Asia far more cheaply, thanks to the bigger vessels they employ. And U.S.

Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG) announced today that the Transocean Barents, a harsh-environment, ultra-deepwater floater, has been awarded a 15-month contract with Suncor Energy at a dayrate of $260,000. The estimated contract backlog, excluding mobilization, is $119 million. The rig is expected to commence operations offshore Canada in the third quarter of 2017.

Customer-case shows potential for a 40% reduction in engineering hours on subsea paperwork, and up to 80% less documentation. A cross-industry project led by DNV GL to halt the boom in subsea documentation shows that implementing a standardized approach can significantly reduce engineering hours. The two-year collaboration led by DNV GL has concluded in a publicly available Recommended Practice which can reduce the amount of subsea documentation and enable documentation reuse in a typical subsea field development project. DNVGL-RP-O101 ‘Technical documentation for subsea projects’ details a required minimum set of documentation transferred between E&P companies, operators and contractors for the construction, procurement and operation of a field.

In a sign the massive Alberta wildfire is taking a toll on oil transport, Canadian crude exports to the United States dropped 12 percent last week, while another blend of Canadian sweet crude oil rallied as concerns grow about supply. Overall, trading in Canadian crude was quiet, as the second half of the month is generally inactive. Hot and dry weather and strong winds were expected to push the wildfire burning near Fort McMurray, Alberta eastward on Wednesday, continuing to threaten facilities and work camps in Canada's prized oil sands. With the fire projected to grow further, producers are starting to scramble for needed oil supply.

A bigger-than-expected build in U.S. crude inventories to fresh record highs pushed oil markets lower on Wednesday after an early rally over concerns about production cuts in Canada's oil sands region due to a wildfire. U.S. crude stocks, which have been setting record highs since January, grew 2.8 million barrels last week, government data showed, about a million barrels more than analysts' expectations. Gasoline stocks also posted a surprise increase. The data overshadowed concerns over evacuations in the Canadian province of Alberta, where a wildfire raged unchecked through the Canadian city of Fort McMurray in the heart of the country's oil sands region, prompting some companies, including Suncor Energy and Royal Dutch Shell, to cut back production.

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.

The Canadian province of Alberta, the biggest source of U.S. oil imports, announced the members of its climate change policy review panel on Friday, part of its pledge to implement new rules on greenhouse gas reductions. Environment Minister Shannon Phillips said the panel would offer recommendations to the government by early November, ahead of a key United Nations climate change conference in Paris in December, but did not say when new GHG targets are likely to come into effect. The five members of the panel are University of Alberta energy economist Andrew Leach, former Suncor Energy executive Gord Lambert, Enbridge Inc executive Linda Coady, Pembina Institute board member Stephanie Cairns and Angela Adams, a Metis Fort McMurray school district trustee.

Alberta's energy regulator said on Saturday it is investigating reports that about 30 blue herons have died at a Syncrude Canada oil sands mine site in the northern part of the Canadian province. The Alberta Energy Regulator said it sent investigators to the Syncrude Canada Mildred Lake site, which is about 40 km (25 miles) north of Fort McMurray. In 2010, Syncrude was fined C$3 million ($2.29 million) for negligence in the 2008 deaths of 1,600 ducks in a toxic waste pond, a case that fueled international concern about the environmental impact of developing Canada's oil sands. Syncrude's partners include Canadian Oil Sands Ltd, Imperial Oil Ltd, Suncor Energy Inc, Sinopec , CNOOC Ltd's Nexen, Japan's Mocal Energy and Murphy Oil Co.

Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) has announced that it is to build three shuttle tankers for Teekay Offshore Partners, at a total price of $365m and the contract includes an option for an extra vessel. The contract was signed in Oslo where Nor-Shipping 2015 was held. As for the contract value, while SHI says that the three tankers cost USD 330 million, for Teekay it is USD 365 million. The tankers ordered are 155,000DWT shuttle tankers that are 293m long and 49m wide, and they will be delivered by February 2018. Both SHI and Teekay Offshore have said that the tankers will be used to transport crude oil from offshore oilfields off east Canada. Shuttle tankers are oil tankers that transport crude oil extracted from marine oil fields to storage bases on the ground.

Teekay Offshore Partners L.P. informs it has entered long-term contracts to provide shuttle tanker services for a group of companies producing oil on Canada’s East Coast, including Chevron Canada, Husky Energy, Mosbacher Operating Ltd., Murphy Oil, Nalcor Energy, Statoil and Suncor Energy. The 15-year contracts, plus extension options, will initially be serviced by one of Teekay Offshore’s existing shuttle tankers, the Navion Hispania, and two to three third party-owned shuttle tankers currently operating in East Coast Canada, which will be chartered-in to Teekay Offshore’s Canadian affiliate located in St. John’s, Newfoundland, prior to the delivery of up to four shuttle tanker newbuildings.