Putting makeup on the oil sands

To the critics, they are the tar sands. To proponents, they are the oil sands.

To EnCana, apparently unwilling to sully its public image with something as messy as bitumen, they have morphed into enhanced oil recovery projects.

Cenovus, the oil producing spin from EnCana, was asked during a conference call to explain why EnCana’s third-quarter report avoided any reference to oil sands, even though its big in-situ projects all occupy the same region of northeastern Alberta as all other companies exploiting the vast bitumen deposits.

“What we have done is had a look at the nature of the recovery techniques that we apply on EnCana’s bitumen production, which is 100 percent (steam injection to melt the bitumen to the point where it can flow to the surface),” said Brian Ferguson, EnCana’s chief financial officer and the designated chief executive officer of Cenovus, when it is officially launched Nov. 30.

“There are assets and properties that we drill and use drilling techniques to recover the oil, which is really a form of enhanced recovery.”

He said it was considered “more representative of the nature of Cenovus’ assets to describe them as (EOR) so that there was no confusion with mining projects.”

The assumption from the sidelines is that Cenovus would like to separate itself from the other key oil sands players who are engaged in a public relations battle to prove that their recovery and processing methods do not justify labeling oil sands output as “dirty oil.”

—Gary Park