AMOCO RECEIVES ALBERTA OKAY FOR HEAVY OIL PROJECT

Amoco Canada Petroleum Ltd. has received regulatory approval for a major heavy oil production project near Bonnyville, 170 miles northeast of Edmonton.

The company applied last March for amendments to an earlier approval granted to Dome Petroleum Ltd. for a 50,000 b/d operation in the Primrose heavy oil area of Northeast Alberta.

The application by Dome, which Amoco acquired for $5.5 billion (Canadian) in a 1988 trade, called for vertical drilling. Amoco proposed a horizontal drilling program.

The original approval was for cyclic steam stimulation and vertical or directional wells with 104 wells/section and recovery of 18% of oil in place.

The revised project calls for horizontal wells with a combination of primary and thermal recovery with only 20 wells/section and projected recovery of more than 50% of oil in place. It will use substantially less water.

Amoco reckons the revised project will produce as much as 50,000 b/d from 20 sections.

Amoco will drill a pod of 20 horizontal wells during the next 4 months at a cost of about $25 million (Canadian) and expand the operation during the next decade. The Primrose project, to be linked by a 12 in. pipeline to processing and pipeline facilities at nearby Wolf Lake, has a production target of 50,000 b/d by 2006.

Amoco currently produces about 70,000 b/d of heavy oil from the Wolf Lake, Primrose, Elk Point, and Wabasca reservoirs.

Heavy oil is shipped to Amoco Oil Co.'s Whiting, Ind., refinery.