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Trains, nukes on the move in Alberta
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Technology both ancient and modern is on the move to serve the growing energy needs of Alberta.
Canadian Pacific Railway wants to build new rail lines to serve existing and planned upgraders and refineries northeast of Edmonton, while two companies are toying with the construction of nuclear power plants in northern Alberta.
CPR, Canada’s second largest railway, is seeking regulatory approval to offer expanded services to an area where upgraders worth C$40 billion are in various stages of development.
Although CPR did not estimate the cost of its proposal, Chief Executive Officer Fred Green said the objective is to “build in tandem with the oil sands upgraders and related businesses to create a new network of rail access.”
The multi-phase project will be concentrated on the movement of byproducts from the upgraders, including sulfur, petroleum coke, asphaltene and various liquids and gases.
Nuclear power option more controversial While that undertaking is viewed as a no-brainer for CPR, the nuclear power option is a far more complex and controversial path to pursue.
Even so, privately owned Energy Alberta has pledged to file applications to build twin 1,100 megawatt reactors in northern Alberta at a combined cost of C$6.2 billion, boosting the province’s current generating capacity by 18 percent.
The plans will be submitted to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission by mid-June and, depending on the outcome, could open the door to the use of nuclear power in the oil sands and reduce the consumption of natural gas in the extraction and processing of bitumen, currently 1 billion cubic feet per day and forecast to more than double by 2015.
In a more direct pitch to the oil sands sector, Areva Canada, a unit of France’s Areva Group, is poised to make “initial contacts” with the oil industry and make the case for using nuclear power rather than natural gas to monetize the oil sands resource.
Areva is a leading world player in the construction of nuclear power plants.
The company’s Canadian President Armand Laferrere told reporters that nuclear power can be used in a variety of ways — generating steam for oil extraction, generating electricity to serve bitumen extraction and upgrading and to produce hydrogen without burning methane-rich gas.
But the critics challenge the economics of nuclear power based on the heavy government subsidies needed to support the nuclear industry in Eastern Canada and the safety issues in an area of strategic importance to North America’s energy security.
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