|
Value Creation unveils value-added plans
Drawing from a quarter-century of global experience with Royal Dutch/Shell, Columba Yeung is ready to steer his privately held company on the path to oil sands development on a grand scale.
The founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Value Creation, he has taken the wraps off plans for an integrated operation, exploiting leases holding an estimated 30 billion barrels of resources, of which 3 billion to 8 billion barrels are believed to be recoverable using known methods.
Through BA Energy, a Value Creation subsidiary, Yeung has already established his credentials and attracted interest by proceeding with the Heartland upgrader, scheduled to start operations in 2008 with processing capacity of 77,500 barrels per day and eventual capacity of 260,000 bpd.
With construction under way on the C$900 million facility, Value Creation has taken the next step by announcing its intention to file plans late this year for a 10,000 bpd demonstration facility it aims to bring on stream by early 2009 and expand to 40,000 bpd.
And Yeung’s ambitions don’t end there.
He said that initiating development of the resources sets the stage to leverage “our proprietary technologies and oil sands resources to build a dynamic, successful energy organization with robust, sustainable growth” through a fully integrated approach.
Plan to remove asphaltenes Yeung claims he has the means to turn sticky bitumen into lighter oil by simply removing the thick asphaltenes rather than trying to mix costly diluent to turn the bitumen into refinery-ready crude.
The technology has been put to the test at a demonstration plant south of Calgary, giving Yeung confidence that the Heartland upgrader will operate at less than half the cost of its competitors.
While putting his ideas to the test, Yeung also set about accumulating 18 oil sands leases through brokers and numbered companies, the bulk of it immediately west of leases that form the basis of Canadian Natural Resources’ Horizon project and Total’s Joslyn Creek project.
Value Creation plans to start a 228 well exploration and delineation drilling program in the 2006-07 winter, which will more accurately establish its holdings.
But Yeung is quietly confident that 500,000 bpd of production is possible within 20 years.
The fact that a number of financial institutions are involved in the Heartland upgrader is a signal that Yeung’s optimism is not viewed as misplaced or excessive.
However, there are no immediate plans to take Value Creation public
—Gary Park
| 