building a grassroots world-
scale project,” Rolheiser said.
That includes the environmen-
tal impacts, of which Imperial
has been careful to mind. A
number of technology innova-
tions have been developed by
the mine’s owners to address
the issue.
Kearl will be the first open-
pit mining operation to pro-
duce pipeline-ready bitumen
— a sticky, black, and viscous
form of petroleum oil — with-
out using an upgrader, a fa-
cility that refines bitumen to
synthetic crude oil.
“We do that by virtue of a
technology called paraffinic
froth treatment,” said Rol-
heiser, mentioning a propri-
etary technology patented by
ExxonMobil, Imperial’s affili-
ate and major shareholder.
Generally, froth treatment ex-
tracts clean bitumen from the
froth, a mixture of water, bi-
tumen and other compounds.
In the past, oil sands projects
upgrade their mined bitumen
before pipelining their prod-
uct to oil refineries.
“[Paraffinic froth treatment],
basically, yields a higher
grade of bitumen that can be
shipped to refineries without
upgrading,” Rolheiser said.
“It’s blended with a lighter
hydrocarbon diluent, but then
can be shipped.”
To Imperial Oil, this process
is efficient in production, and
lowers greenhouse gas emis-
sions. “What that does is it
eliminates the need to up-
grade at site,” Rolheiser said.
“Basically, you ship it directly
to a high-conversion refinery,
which refines it into end prod-
ucts — like gasoline, diesel
fuel, jet fuel — you heat the
AUGUST 2013
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