Calgary, Alberta – The Canadian Oil Sands Trust has announced it will increase synthetic crude oil production capacity at its Syncrude project near Fort McMurray, Alberta.

The company said that, based on preliminary scoping and design work by Syncrude and ExxonMobil, the existing Mildred Lake upgrading facility has latent capacity that can be “unlocked” through a series of steps, allowing synthetic crude oil production to grow to approximately 425,000 barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the decade. The projects include accessing excess coking capacity, modifying facilities, and potentially adding new ancillary units.

The expanded capacity would be supplied by bitumen from an undeveloped Aurora South mine. The company said that if construction on mining trains goes ahead, it could result in total bitumen productive capacity of 600,000 bpd by 2020, with excess transported by pipeline and sold.

Decisions regarding further upgrading capacity will be based on evolving price spreads of heavy and light crude oil.