- Imperial Oil (NYSEMKT:IMO) President and CEO Rich Kruger defended his company today against suggestions that it was slow to make improvements at the Syncrude oil sands project after last month's electrical failure knocked the mine and upgrader offline; the joint venture, in which IMO owns a 25% stake, is not expected to ramp back up to full capacity until September.
- All three of IMO’s major upstream assets - the Kearl oil sands mine and the Cold Lake steam-based operation, as well as Syncrude - were affected by maintenance during Q2, which National Bank Financial analyst Travis Wood says knocked out 89M bbl/day of production in the quarter.
- Suncor (NYSE:SU), which owns 58% of Syncrude, fielded questions yesterday about why problems continue to arise at the joint venture despite pledges to boost reliability, and SU President and CEO Steve Williams criticized JV partners IMO as well as China's Sinopec and Cnooc’s Nexen for being slow to adopt an accelerated improvement plan.
- “We are all about anything that can add or enhance value to any assets we own,” Kruger says, adding that IMO has been working with SU to transform Syncrude and reduce costs including making use of SU’s facilities at its base plant mining operation adjacent to Syncrude.
- "We’re looking at things like commercial arrangement that can be constructed that can help on both sides of the fence," without specifying whether the commercial arrangements referred to building pipelines connecting SU’s base plant with Syncrude.
- Now read: Suncor Energy Inc. 2018 Q2 - Results - Earnings Call Slides
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