A recovery plan for the Syncrude Mildred Lake facility has been outlined following the fire on March 14, 2017.
The cause of the incident was determined to be a naphtha leak. Suncor wrote in a press release that the damage has been isolated to a piperack adjacent to the hydrotreater, containing piping, cables and electrical circuits.
Syncrude has advanced their planned eight-week maintenance — which was scheduled for April — in order to mitigate the impact.
Suncor is expecting to handle volumes of untreated Syncrude production to assist in managing inventory. Suncor says the outage shouldn’t change their overall production guidance for 2017.
Pipeline shipments of treated product are expected to resume at up to 50% capacity in April and continue to full rates after the turnaround is complete.
One Syncrude employee was injured in the fire, at the time of the incident he was transported to the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre (NLRHC) in serious but stable condition.
