Firebag continues to demonstrate its track record of continuous improvement and value delivery through back-to-back record quarters in the first half of the year. After delivering a record quarter of 229,000 barrels per day in the first quarter, the Firebag team beat their own record in the second quarter delivering 234,000 barrels per day. Small, site-led debottlenecking is one of the many ways the in situ team is not only raising the bar, but also sustaining its achievements through the Operational Excellence Management System (OEMS).
Debottlenecking takes specific areas and equipment that limit production (referred to as bottlenecks) and optimizes or eliminates them to increase production.
Over his 18-year career at Suncor, Firebag Operations Coordinator Bruce Buhr has experienced many process bottlenecks. However, one that he knew we could overcome was related to a hydraulic constraint on a water system in Firebag’s Plant 92 process unit. This constraint on the water restricted the plant’s capacity to increase oil production.
“Over time we have increased production at Firebag, and it got to the point where we couldn’t get enough water flow out of the plant,” says Bruce. “That drove the idea to add a new water line so we could separate the flows and alleviate the backups.”
Affectionately known as Buhr Pass, in honour of Bruce, the new dedicated water line, installed in the first half of this year, had an almost instant pay off. Within a day of implementation, Firebag achieved its highest ever barrel-per-day production.
“This simple and innovative approach has proven to be a low-cost solution that has seen incredible pay off,” says Abilash Mende Anjaneyalu, In Situ Development Engineer. “This project, with a total cost of approximately $500,000, has contributed an average of 3,600 barrels of additional production per day.”
Another example that involves engaging people closest to the work is a temperature restriction removal on the pipeline that exports diluted bitumen to our Base Plant upgrading facility. It started when a control room operator questioned several high temperature alarms on one of the lines.
“When we looked further into the cause, results indicated a temperature specification was creating a bottleneck in our production capacity,” says Rabih El-Hendi, Senior Process Engineer. “A cross functional team worked together to realize a solution that removes this restriction, allowing us to fully utilize the line.”
There was an opportunity to redefine the temperature specifications through the Manage Quality Products (MQP) process of the OEMS. MQP focuses on explicit definitions for product quality targets and specifications, and how we can ensure we are maximizing value while meeting requirements.
“Through the use of OEMS we were able to redefine the temperature specifications, and in turn, increase the temperature limit, alleviating the alarms and safely adding more barrels to production,” says Craig Watt, Site Process Lead for MQP and In Situ Contact Engineering Manager. “There is a huge amount of value in defining what your specifications are. This does not happen without OEMS providing the framework to make sure it is explicitly defined and coordinated through multiple processes. All those processes are defined and working together to drive this change sustainably.”
Now, there is less reliance on the cooling systems, allowing diluted bitumen to flow through the lines to our regionally integrated sites. During summer months, this translates to up to 5,000 barrels per day of additional production with no additional cost.
The success is a result of multiple teams, people and even sites working together to unlock value, continuously improve, fully utilize existing assets and leverage an integrated asset structure. Both debottlenecking examples supported the back-to-back Firebag record production quarters.