CH2M HILL

Nexen Long Lake SAGD Debottlenecking Project

The Long Lake project SAGD project is a joint venture between Nexen and Opti Canada. Long Lake is located 40km South East of Fort McMurray in the Athabasca Oil sands region.

SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) is an in situ oil recovery method used to extract oil that is too deep for a conventional oil sands mine.

Phase 1 of the project is a 70,000 b/d operation that will extract crude oil from 81 SAGD well pairs and covert it into premium synthetic crude oil.

CH2M HILL Construction Canada was a general contractor responsible for the debottlenecking of the original plant. The main scope of work involved heat tracing, the installation of piping in an existing rack as well as structural and mechanical work.

The greatest challenge on this project was the fact that it was a combination of a green and brown field package working within a live plant.

The debottlenecking facilities had to be tied in to the commercial facility and the over all project involved most sections of the original plant including inlet treating, de-oiling, water treatment, steam generation, produced gas handling as well as tank farm and utilities.