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Going green in Canada Suncor, Husky reinforce leading roles in ethanol production; plants will produce combined 330 million liters a year Gary Park Petroleum News Calgary Correspondent
Two of Canada’s leading developers of bitumen and heavy oil are also leading the way into a greener future.
Suncor Energy and Husky Energy have stepped up their ethanol programs — Suncor with plans for a C$120 million plant at Sarnia, Ontario, and Husky with a C$90 million-$95 million plant near its heavy oil upgrader at Lloydminster, Saskatchewan.
Suncor will receive C$22 million in federal money for its plant, which is expected to produce 200 million liters a year to be blended into gasoline sold through its Ontario retail stations by about mid-2006.
Already, Sunoco-branded gasolines contain 9.8 percent ethanol, making the company Canada’s largest user and marketer of ethanol.
Husky, the smallest of Canada’s integrated oil companies, plans Western Canada’s largest ethanol facility that will come on stream by late 2005 and produce 130 million liters a year.
“Husky Energy is committed to continually improving fuel quality and expanding its operations to meet consumer demand,” President and Chief Executive Officer John Lau told a news conference.
Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert welcomed the investment as a “major step towards our goal of growing the economy and in a ‘green’ and sustainable way.”
He said the facility will provide a new outlet for Saskatchewan grain farmers, who have been struggling to survive in recent years amid droughts and slumping prices. Ethanol blending reduces carbon monoxide emissions Ethanol is produced from grain, corn or wood waste. When added to gasoline it promotes fuel combustion, raises octane levels and prevents fuel line freezing.
The use of the ethanol-blended fuel also reduces carbon monoxide emissions, by as much as 30 percent in Suncor’s estimation, and thus net emissions of greenhouse gases.
Suncor is also working on a technology to slash its use of natural gas in converting Alberta’s raw bitumen into synthetic crude.
Chief Executive Officer Rick George told an investors’ conference in Toronto he hopes to make an announcement within 12 to 18 months on the use of clean-burning coke as well as turning coke into natural gas — two techniques aimed at finding ways to utilize what is described as a dirty fossil fuel, high in sulfur and with a lower energy content than natural gas, without harming the environment.
The coke is a byproduct of the upgrading process in which Suncor extracts carbon from bitumen to create lighter synthetic crude.
In the final quarter of 2003, it cost Suncor C$11.05 to produce a barrel of synthetic oil, of which C$1.60 covered the cost of natural gas.
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