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.

After overburden is removed, open-pit mining operations use shovels to excavate oil sands bitumen ore, which is trucked to sizers and breaker units that reduce the size of the ore. Next, a slurry of hot water, sand and bitumen is created and delivered via a pipeline to extraction plants.

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