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Arizona YUMA refinery planners ink early deal for Canadian synthetic crude
Platts
Calgary
Petroleumworld.com 03 30 07
The developers of the Arizona Clean Fuels Refinery YUMA project have
inked a letter of intent with Canadian synthetic crude producers to supply the
refinery with heavy synthetic crude, the company's chief executive officer
Glen McGinnis said Friday."We would process a synthetic-bitumen (partially upgraded) blend of
oil ... [which] has more distillate for making diesel and jet fuels,"
McGinnis told Platts. "The names of the suppliers are confidential at this
point but they are all major operators in the oil sands."There was also no mention of when the LOIs with the Canadian producers
were signed.Canadian trading sources said it would mostly be Suncor Energy. Syncrude
Canada's supplies are typically light sweet while Husky Energy's synthetic
crude output is also committed, traders noted. Most of the Athabasca Oil Sands
Project's heavy synthetic crude is refined at Shell's 119,000 b/d Scotford
refinery, near Edmonton, Alberta. Chevron, a 20% stake holder in AOSP, at
times does export heavy synthetic crude to California.The AOSP upgrader in Scotford currently processes 190,000 b/d of bitumen
(158,000 b/d of synthetic crude output) is expanding its upgrader to process
300,000 b/d of bitumen (250,000 b/d of synthetic crude production) in 2010.
But AOSP sources said the expanded output in 2010 may initially be available
but once Shell builds its new 150-250,000 b/d refinery near Sarnia, Ontario,
AOSP may not be in a position to supply synthetic crude to the YUMA project.This 150,000 b/d greenfield refinery, the first to be built in the US in
30 years and located near the borders of California and Mexico, is being
planned to run on Canadian synthetic crude and Mexican heavy crudes. The ratio
of Canadian synthetic and Mexican heavy crudes were not disclosed. The $3.7
billion YUMA refinery would produce 65-80,000 b/d of gasoline that will meet
California and Arizona standards.--Esa Ramasamy, esa_ramasamy@platts.com
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Platts 29 03 07
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