Syncrude

Syncrude Canada Ltd.

Type	Joint Venture
Industry	Oil and Gas
Founded	December 1964
Headquarters	Fort McMurray, Alberta
Products	Petroleum
Number of employees	5,600 (2009)
Website	www.syncrude.ca

Syncrude Canada Ltd. is one of the world's largest producers of synthetic crude oil from oil sands and the largest single source producer in Canada. It is located just outside Fort McMurray in the Athabasca Oil Sands, and has a nameplate capacity of 350,000 barrels per day (56,000 m³/d) of oil, equivalent to about 13% of Canada's consumption. It has approximately 5.1 billion barrels (810,000,000 m³) of proven and probable reserves (11.9 billion when including contingent and prospective resources) situated on 8 leases over 3 contiguous sites. Including fully realized prospective reserves, current production capacity could be sustained for well over 90 years.

The company is a joint venture between five partners. As a result, Syncrude is not traded directly, but rather through the individual owners. As of June 2016, the partners (by percentage): Suncor Energy (53.74%), Imperial Oil (25%), Sinopec (9.03%), Nexen (7.23%), and Mocal Energy (a subsidiary of Nippon Oil Exploration) (5%). Because of Nexen's subsequent takeover by CNOOC, over 16% of the shares in Syncrude are controlled by State Owned Enterprises (SOE).

The ownership board must approve all annual operating budgets and proposed capital spending projects, and are required to provide the funding for said activities based on their ownership share.

Syncrude was formed as a research consortium in 1964. Construction at the Syncrude site began in 1973, and it officially opened in 1978. Starting in 1996, Syncrude has been expanding its operations. Between 1996 and 1999, the original mine was expanded and the plant was "debottlenecked", increasing production from 73.5 million barrels (11,690,000 m³) per year in 1996 to 81.4 million in 1999. The total cost of this stage of expansion was $470 million. Between 1998 and 2001, a new mine, Aurora, was opened 35 km north of the original site, and further debottlenecking was undertaken. Production started in Aurora in July 2001. Syncrude's production increased to 90 million barrels (14,000,000 m³) per year by the end of 2001. Total cost for this stage was $1 billion.