Canada chems welcome Alberta’s bitumen upgrading proposal

22 July 2009 21:44  [Source: ICIS news]

TORONTO (ICIS news)--Canada’s chemical industry on Wednesday welcomed a plan by the Alberta provincial government to promote bitumen processing within the province.

The Alberta government on Tuesday issued a “request for proposals” to upgrade up to 75,000 bbl/day of bitumen under the province’s bitumen royalty in-kind programme. As the resource owner, the government is entitled to a royalty share of bitumen production in-kind.

Richard Paton, president of the Canadian Chemical Producers Association (CCPA), said that Alberta’s firm commitment to upgrading bitumen in Canada was a step towards potentially world-scale feedstock opportunities for the country’s petrochemicals industry.

Canada’s chemicals producers are looking to the upgrading of bitumen as an opportunity to provide valuable feedstock for existing plants as well as potential new investments.

By upgrading bitumen, the petrochemicals industry could produce products of up to 10 to 40 times the value of the natural resource, the CCPA said.

Details about the request for proposals and the bitumen royalty in-kind programme, which was introduced last year, are available on the Alberta government website.

Key chemical producers in Alberta include NOVA Chemicals, Dow Chemical and Shell.

For more on NOVA, Dow and Shell visit ICIS company intelligence
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By: Stefan Baumgarten
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