Shell may process oil sands crude at US refineries
Shell is still evaluating options and the timing for future phases of its Athabasca oil sands project, which now produces 155,000 barrels a day.
The company and its partners have proposed boosting oil sands output to 770,000 barrels a day over the next several years, and two years ago announced plans for an upgrading plant to be built in four 100,000-barrel-a-day stages.
“There’s a range of options being looked at. One potential outcome is that all that upgrading’s done in Alberta,” David Collyer, Shell’s country chair for Canada, told reporters.
“Another option, I suppose at the other extreme, is that none of it happens in Alberta and all of it happens in the U.S.”
Shell may also decide on a combination of the two for upgrading, in which the extra-heavy crude from the oil sands is processed into lighter, synthetic oil that can be used by refineries to make gasoline and other petroleum products.
Shell and its partners, Chevron Corp (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research,Stock Buzz) and Marathon Oil Corp (MRO.N: Quote, Profile, Research,Stock Buzz), upgrade the crude from the northern Alberta mining project at the Scotford plant near Edmonton.
A C$12.8 billion expansion of that facility will boost output by 100,000 barrels a day around the end of this decade.
U.S. refineries, such as the 158,000-barrel-a-day plant at Martinez, California, and 332,000-bpd Deer Park, Texas, facility would have to be retooled to run the Canadian bitumen, Collyer said.
Various companies have proposed pipeline projects that would boost Canadian producers’ ability to ship crude to those markets, but Shell has not aligned itself with any of them, he said.
“These are complicated decisions that end up being influenced by cost — the cost of construction of new facilities in the different markets, the cost of transportation, what the markets look like,” he said. “There are myriad factors that enter into this and we’re not at the point where we’re ready to make that decision.” (Reporting by Jeffrey Jones; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
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Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
