SA total projects to build sands of several billion dollars of an oil improving the factory close to Edmonton, Alberta, to treat the additional-heavy crude of its Canadian projects, the known as French oil main thing Monday.

The total joint several realizers projecting such factories in the area, but the head of the stretched labour of its Alberta by Canadian operation and of the inflation of increase in cost due to oil sand precipitations did not discourage it.

“We’re trying to use the expertise of the local workforce, because there is a great deal of expertise here in Alberta, in Calgary, Edmonton and further north, and then trying to match that with some of the international experience and expertise that Total can bring to it,” Michael Borrell, president of Total E&P Canada Ltd., said.

The company began the process of standardization for 200.000 barrels a upgrader of day, in strong Saskatchewan, Alberta, which would turn tar-like the bitumen of its two great developments of oil sands in the light crude refinery-loan.

It would be built in two stages, the first being a 130,000 barrel a day phase starting in 2013 or 2014.

Total said it would need 4,000 workers to build the plant and up to 400 to run it.

Total didn’t provide cost details, although FirstEnergy Capital Corp. analyst Mark Friesen said plants using such technology, called delayed coking, have been pegged at about C$45,000 ($40,900) per daily barrel of output or more.

That would put a price of at least C$5.9 billion on the first phase of the Total upgrader.

Total has interests in two big oil sands developments: the $9 billion Joslyn mining project, slated to produce 100,000 barrels a day in its first big phase, and the Surmont venture, where it pumps steam into the ground to allow bitumen to flow to the surface in wells.

With its growing output, the company does not plan to take in third-party volumes at the upgrader, Borrell said.

Other companies planning upgraders in the Edmonton area include BA Energy, Royal Dutch Shell , Petro-Canada and Northwest Upgrading.

Another firm, Synenco Energy Inc. , halted work on its upgrader last week, blaming soaring costs and the potential for poor returns as a result.

Still, costs in that area are seen as lower than near the northerly oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, Alberta, where the bulk of the reserves are.

“It’s still a lot of activity in one place at one time, but labor is closer,” Friesen said. “It’s easier, perhaps, because you can work a 12-hour shift and go home and see your kids. You’re not stuck in camp for three weeks at a time.”

Total is also a major investor in heavy crude projects in Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez’s government has seized operational control from many of the world’s biggest oil companies.

That has not necessarily prompted the French oil company to put more emphasis on the Canadian oil sands business, which it entered in the mid-1990s, Borrell said.

Canada’s unconventional crude is marked by huge reserves with long-term potential and a need for complex technology, things Total looks for in its investments, he said.

“We then don’t need to look at the portfolio effect to see that oil sands makes sense to us whatever else is happening anywhere else in the world,” he said.

($1=$1.10 Canadian)

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