Aug 31 (Reuters) - Canadian Oil Sands Ltd COS.TO , the
biggest shareholder in the Syncrude oil sands project, said it
has halted crude oil production after a fire damaged equipment
at its processing facility in northern Alberta on Saturday.
The company said the main coker conversion units were not
damaged and Syncrude continues to operate. However, it suspended
synthetic crude oil production and is currently developing a
recovery plan, Canadian Oil Sands said late on Sunday.
The operator of Canada's largest synthetic crude project
said on Saturday it was investigating the causes of an early
morning fire at an upgrading plant.
The fire broke out a few hours after the province's energy
regulator announced it was shutting in 95 pipelines operated by
Nexen, one of the partners in the project, because of safety
issues identified following a large oil-related spill in July.
Syncrude is a 326,000 barrel-per-day mining and upgrading
project, where mined oil sands bitumen is upgraded into
refinery-ready synthetic crude.
The operations are a joint venture of seven partners:
Canadian Oil Sands Ltd COS.TO , Suncor Energy Inc SU.TO ,
Imperial Oil Ltd IMO.TO , Nippon Oil subsidiary Mocal Energy
Ltd 5020.T , Murphy Oil Corp (NYSE:MUR) MUR.N , China's Sinopec
600028.SS , and CNOOC subsidiary 0883.HK Nexen.