Fort Hills is an oil sands mining area comprising leases on the east side of the Athabasca River, north of Oil Sands Base operations. Fort Hills operations are substantially similar to those of Suncor’s Oil Sands Base mining and extraction assets; however, Fort Hills uses a paraffinic froth treatment process to produce a marketable bitumen product that is partially decarbonized, resulting in a higher-quality bitumen requiring less diluent and eliminating the need for on-site upgrading
facilities.

Fort Hills is an open-pit truck and shovel mine.

The mine will deliver oil sands feed to two ore crushing plants, where oil sand material will be crushed and processed. Ore from the crushing plants will be mixed with warm water and conditioned to create slurry, which will be transported to primary extraction via three hydrotransport lines.

Extraction process
In primary extraction, the conditioned oil sands slurry is fed to two trains of separation cells. The separation cells remove the bitumen from the sand, which yields a froth mixture of bitumen, water and clay.

Froth is then sent for further treatment in secondary extraction where it is mixed with solvent and sent through two stages of counter-current settlers to remove asphaltenes and excess sand and water. The bitumen is then sent to a solvent recovery unit to remove the solvent and prepare the bitumen for shipping. The final product is marketable bitumen.