{"id":410325,"date":"2026-01-15T06:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T06:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/410325\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T06:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T06:25:11","slug":"rare-brand-new-oil-sands-project-starts-operating-in-alberta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/410325\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare brand-new oil sands project starts operating in Alberta"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time in nearly eight years, a brand-new oil sands project is operating in Alberta.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a rare development even as oil sands production continues to\u00a0set new records<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Blackrod, located about 3.5 hours north of Edmonton, isn\u2019t an expansion or optimization of an existing project.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a new facility built on a site that previously had no large-scale oil sands operations.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Drilling for the Blackrod SAGD project. Photo courtesy International Petroleum Corporation<\/p>\n

The 30,000-barrel-per-day steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) project will be \u201ctransformational\u201d for Vancouver-based International Petroleum Corporation (IPC), said CEO William Lundin.<\/p>\n

At full rates, Blackrod will nearly double the company\u2019s current production of about 45,000 barrels per day. And it\u2019s got room to grow.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe very much believe in future phase expansions,\u201d Lundin\u00a0told analysts<\/a>\u00a0last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlackrod [is] a massive resource base where we have greater than one billion barrels of contingent resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same could be said of the broader oil sands, a 1.8-trillion-barrel resource base where most growth over the past decade has come from optimizing existing projects,\u00a0according to\u00a0S&P Global.<\/p>\n

Nearly all future growth will come from optimizations too, analysts said in S&P Global\u2019s latest\u00a0oil sands outlook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These \u201clearning-by-doing\u201d investments to expand the vast existing asset base are expected to increase oil sands production by about 400,000 barrels per day by 2030.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s uniquely new, Blackrod is also based on learning by doing.<\/p>\n

At the site is one of the oil sands industry\u2019s longest-running SAGD pilot projects, a single well pair operation that has been running since 2011.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Blackrod SAGD pilot operations. Photo courtesy International Petroleum Corporation<\/p>\n

Production averaged about 630 barrels per day in 2025,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the Alberta Energy Regulator.<\/p>\n

In 2023, IPC\u00a0gave the go-ahead<\/a>\u00a0to build the first phase of full operations at Blackrod, an investment of approximately $1.17 billion.<\/p>\n

The project has regulatory approval to produce up to 80,000 barrels per day.<\/p>\n

Steam injection is now underway, marking the start of the underground warm-up phase, with first oil expected by the end of September.<\/p>\n

This article was originally produced by the Canadian Energy Centre.<\/a> See the original article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the first time in nearly eight years, a brand-new oil sands project is operating in Alberta. It\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410326,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-410325","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410325\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}