Canada oil sands project for Technip

Paris -- Fort Hills Energy L.P. has awarded Technip the contract for the transformation of heavy oil from the bitumen sands of the Fort Hills Oil Sands project to be constructed near Edmonton in Alberta.

Technip will carry out the front-end engineering design, detailed engineering, procurement, construction and project management for the primary upgrader unit, which transforms heavy oil into lighter synthetic fuel. The deal also covers a diluent recovery unit (DRU), a delayed coking unit (DCU), and related facilities.

The DRU will recover the solvent from the diluted bitumen pipelined from the Fort Hills mine site to the upgrader. The DCU will upgrade the heavy bitumen into lighter hydrocarbons through coke extraction. The hydrocarbons will be further processed in other sections to become synthetic crude oil, which will then be refined into consumer products such as gasoline and diesel.

Technip’s operations and engineering center in Rome will execute the contract, beginning with the confirmation of the existing design basis memorandum and associated cost estimate, the French group said.

Fort Hills Energy is a joint venture between Petro-Canada (55%), UTS Energy Corp. (30%) and Teck Cominco Ltd (15%). Petro-Canada Oil Sands Inc. (PCOSI), a wholly owned subsidiary of Petro-Canada, is the contract operator for the project.