The oil and gas giant is working to enhance efficiency across its sprawling network by shifting the main target to incremental gains over costly expansion projects.
The effort resulted in upstream production of 829,000 barrels per day, marking the most effective third quarter ever, the very best refinery throughput ever of 488,000 barrels per day, and the very best refinery sales ever at 612,000 barrels per day.
“These are now back-to-back quarterly records,” Chief Executive Rich Kruger said on an earnings call Wednesday.
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Suncor’s efforts to ease bottlenecks and reduce costs range from recent maintenance techniques to switching to larger, autonomous trucks. This includes spending $1 million to extend the bottom plant’s capability from 65,000 to 100,000 barrels per day and spending $500,000 to extend Firebag production by 6,000 to 10,000 barrels per day, each creating additional free money flow of over $100 million per 12 months. said Krueger.
The effort also includes every part all the way down to the fabric within the containers that hold additives, said Dave Oldreive, executive vp of Downstream.
“It appears like a small thing. It’s price $50,000 a 12 months, not an enormous deal within the grand scheme of things, but if you add it up, we’ve 15,000 people on this company doing this and we’ll proceed to drive improvements.”
Third quarter results exceeded expectations
Higher production helped the corporate generate $2.02 billion within the third quarter, up from $1.54 billion a 12 months earlier.
It also helped Suncor reduce its debt by greater than $1.4 billion within the quarter, reaching its net debt goal of $8 billion, which exceeded many outside forecasts, the corporate said. This triggered a commitment to return 100% of excess funds to shareholders, up from 50% in the beginning of the 12 months.
