Aurora's first production train opened in July 2000 at a cost of about $600 million.
One of Aurora's most unique features is its location - it is 35 kilometres northeast of Syncrude's existing plant, across the Athabasca River. The development of Aurora has allowed us to disconnect the oil sand mining and extraction from bitumen upgrading, bringing the concept of a regional business to life.
Mining and extraction occurs at Aurora with the resulting bitumen froth transported by pipeline to the existing plant for upgrading to Syncrude Sweet Blend.
Aurora is situated on Leases 10, 12, 31 and 34, and will ultimately house four production trains.
Aurora North, on leases 10, 12 and 34, has the potential to produce some 2.5 billion barrels of Syncrude Sweet Blend - more than double the amount we've produced since startup in 1978.
Aurora's Train 2 began operation in late 2003, and Train 3 is planned for 2008.
Over 20 million cubic metres of material was handled in overburden stripping and mine opening for Aurora.
An 80-megawatt gas turbine (GTG) co-generation unit has been installed at Aurora and the exhaust gases from the GTG are used to heat the extraction process water. The new GTG increases the total generating capacity of our utilities operation to 350 megawatts.
