The proposed Fort Hills Oil Sands Project is located 90 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the Athabasca Oil Sands region and comprises Oil Sands Leases 5, 8, and 52 (Figure 1). TrueNorth Energy L.P. is the operator and majority interest owner of the project. In May of 1998, TrueNorth Energy acquired a 78 percent interest in Oil Sands Leases 5 and 52. UTS Energy Corporation, TrueNorth Energy's partner in the project, holds the remaining 22 percent. In December 2000, Oil Sands Lease 8 was acquired, bringing the total area of the Fort Hills Oil Sands Project to approximately 18,700 hectares.
The mineable oil sands in the project area are found in the Lower Cretaceous (Aptian) McMurray Formation of the Mannville Group. The McMurray Formation has been informally subdivided in the project area into a lower fluvial member, a middle estuarine member and an upper marginal marine member. All three members contain mineable oil sands, and are further subdivided into distinct facies associations for the purpose of improving resource delineation and characterization
Drill programs of ever-increasing size and scope have followed review of previous leaseholders' data. This has resulted in a 3D geological block-model being developed using a very large database of core, borehole geophysical logs and core analyses data (Table 1). Assessment and modeling of data from over 400 drillholes within the project area has resulted in the delineation of approximately 2.4 billion barrels of surface mineable reserves. Over 400 additional core holes are currently being assessed and integrated into the geological model.
Characteristics of the ore, which are critical to mining and ore processing, are also managed within the geological model to facilitate mine planning. The 3D block-model enables the mining engineers and planners to discriminate between ore and waste material more effectively, and thus predict volumes of material to be mined. The geological model also facilitates associated efforts, such as geotechnical, hydrological, hydrogeological, environmental, reclamation and ore process planning.