CALGARY – A joint federal-provincial review panel says the Frontier Oil Sands Mine project application is now complete enough to advance to a public hearing set to take place as early as September.
It says it is now accepting submissions about preferred locations and dates for the hearing, adding that requests to submit evidence or participate must be made in writing by June 22.
The open pit project proposed by Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd. is estimated to cost $20 billion and designed to produce 260,000 barrels per day of bitumen from a site about 110 kilometres north of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta.
That’s more than the recently completed 194,000-bpd Fort Hills mining project in which Teck is a minority partner holding 21 per cent and Suncor Energy Inc. is the operator holding 54 per cent of the project.
The joint review panel was appointed in May 2016 and given 13 months to assess the project and its environmental impacts. It won approval last November for an eight-month delay to complete its review.
Two years ago, Teck said the earliest date for first oil from Frontier would be 2026.
Companies in this article: (TSX:TECK.B, TSX:SU)