Shell Canada - Athabasca Oil Sands Dry Bitumen Plant

Client: Shell Canada Limited

Location: Scotford, Alberta, Canada

Industry: Fuels

Map showing the location of Shell Canada - Athabasca Oil Sands Dry Bitumen Plant

Executive Summary

Shell Canada Ltd. awarded Fluor the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) of the Primary Process Units (PPU) of its Athabasca Oil Sands Downstream Project, located in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta.

This facility has a design capacity of 155,000 barrels of dry bitumen per calendar day. It also includes a crude vacuum unit and an 80,000 BPSD, two-train LC-Finer hydrocracker. In addition to the primary process units, the project includes hydrogen production, a sulfur block and offsites and utilities.

We were also responsible for EPC of associated modifications to Shell's adjacent Scotford Refinery in a joint venture arrangement. The largest scope of the Athabasca Oil Sands Downstream Project (AOSD) is the downstream portion, or the Scotford Upgrader.

The AOSD is the world's largest heavy oil upgrader project with a $1.1 billion award to Fluor. The Upgrader, based on hydroconversion technology, processes bitumen from the Muskeg River Mine into high quality, low-sulfur, light synthetic crude oil.

Client's Challenge

The project includes new upgrades, housed within the Primary Process Units (PPU), a hydrogen manufacturing plant, a sulfur complex, utilities and offsite facilities and modifications to the existing refinery. It will convert bitumen, a thick crude oil mixed with sand, transported via pipeline from the Muskeg River Mine in Fort McMurray, Alberta, into synthetic light crude oil that is high quality and low sulfur.

We played a key role in the construction management of the entire project. Our early project planning of design, procurement and field operations helped the client achieve its aggressive goals. The construction teams were involved at the beginning of the project and were able to realize significant schedule improvements.

On March 25, 2003, the Athabasca Oil Sands - Scotford Upgrader was producing synthetic crude oil.

Fluor's Solution

We were responsible for the engineering, procurement, construction and precommissioning of the Primary Process Units (PPU), one of the largest and most complex components of the project. The vacuum tower in the PPU is one of the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, at more than 157 feet in height.

Logistically, the project was fast-tracked. The movement of both equipment and people was extremely critical to the success of the project. The Fluor team used MaterialManager® to expedite the material sequencing. This allowed us to deliver the pipe rack modules three weeks ahead of schedule and within budget for the PPU portion.

We installed and welded out 1,000 to 1,200 spools per week. At peak, it was more than 1,600 spools. In total, 14,800 piles and 52,000 spools were used. The scaffolding to support the vacuum tower was erected, used to install insulation and dismantled in 34 days.

There were 10,500 workers at peak construction, expending over 23 million direct field work hours. In order to get workers to and from the remote site efficiently, we transported about 65% of the workers each day using over 130 buses.

Weather was also a factor. Temperatures often dipped to minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Conclusion

A mentoring program was initiated, whereby experienced workers taught more than 1,000 apprentices about safety and other important aspects of working on a large industrial site. Project-specific health, safety and environmental training was also available for 1,200 supervisors and managers. The program won a “Best Practice” award from the Alberta Construction Association.

Significant safety milestones were achieved, including Safety Excellence Awards for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 million safe work hours. Over 23 million direct field work hours were expended.

Athabasca and Fluor were recognized by the Shell Canada President's Safety Award and the Shell Canada Contractor Safety Management Award.