Ecuador court gives green light for Silvercorp, Salazar’s El Domo project
The ruling removes the last major obstacle for the $250 million project, located 150 km northeast of Guayaquil.
Calgary-based Laricina Energy said Friday it is seeking regulatory approvals for a 150,000 barrel-per-day expansion at its Germain oilsands project in northern Alberta.
The three-phase expansion would add to the 5,000 bopd Germain Commercial Demonstration Project for a total production capacity of 155,000 bopd of bitumen from the Grand Rapids Formation.
The first phase of the Germain Commercial Demonstration Project started in October of last year; it is expected to begin producing in the second quarter of 2013. Phases 2 to 5 would roll out between 2013 and 2021.
Laricina uses in-situ technologies including steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) to release bitumen from underground oilsands formations.
In SAGD, two parallel horizontal wells are drilled a few metres apart, then steam is injected down a vertical well into the upper horizontal well. The heated bitumen flows down to the lower well, where it is pumped to the surface.
The resource potential for in-situ oil sands extraction is huge. Surface mining is only feasible for the shallow oil sands deposits found north of Fort McMurray, which means that 80 percent of the resource is too deep for mining and requires in situ (Latin for “in place”) recovery methods.
Image of Laricina’s Germain Commercial Demonstration Project by Laricina Energy
