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ATHABASCA OIL SANDS AIRPORTS :

Trans-con to Bush Strips

SWIFT CONFERENCE

BANFF

RP Erickson & Associates September 2012

Why the Interest in the Oil Sands ?

•  1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen in place, of which some 170 million barrels are recoverable at current prices

•  a strategic economic, if not geo-political, asset for Alberta and Canada

•  the Athabasca Oil Sands Area (AOSA) is 93,000 sq km which accounts for 66% of the total Alberta Oil Sands area – contiguous to the Peace River & Cold Lake Oil Sands Areas

•  Two types of Oil Sand plays : surface mineable and in situ – SAGD deposits

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Concentration of Oil Sands Deposits

Surface Mining requires 4 to

5x as many operations

workers as do SAGD plays for similar bpd of output.

Both plays require like

numbers of construction

workers per bdp of output : surface mines can take 3 to

4 years for construction;

SAGD typically 2 years.

150 on-site SAGD workers to produce 60,000 bpd.

A single shift worker will

create 4 E&D pax

movements per a month.

Overview of AOSA civil aviation activities

•  Civil aviation within the AOSA run the entire gamut of the sector’s activities : from ab initio flight training to full network commercial carriers to air ambulance to fire suppression.

•  Total AOSA passenger 2011 activity roughly 1.5 million pax; 100,000 aircraft movements activity equivalent to the 9th largest airport in Canada

•  2011 AOSA Fly-In, Fly-Out charter traffic 720,000 pax – 2012 growth likely +15%. YMM Fly-In, Fly-Out totals – 280,000 pax. Most National Airport System airports would welcome anything approaching these pax flows !

•  At present, 47 operational airports in the AOSA. Of this total, 22 aerodromes are not listed in the CFS ! An additional 6 airports are identified as ‘abandoned’ : a number of which are likely to be developed in the near future.

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Overview of AOSA civil aviation activities

Tier 1 – Certified, public airfields (3)

Tier 2 – Private Registered airports

(PPR) comparatively large, operate at near Certified standards (5)

Tier 3 – Private Registered airports

(PPR), more limited amenities,

smaller scale operations (15)

Tier 4 – No services, Private,

largely recreational (18)

Abandoned – though several are in

use as ‘lay down’ yards, and may

find their way into active service (6)

New roadways planned to link Fort

MacKay area, both into the western

AOSA and also south into Fort McMurray and Anzac

AOSA Airports : Picture Report

Suncor’s Firebag : R16-34 6890 x 148’

Critical Aircraft : B767-300ER

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AOSA Airports : Picture Report

AOSA Airports : Picture Report

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AOSA Airports : Picture Report

AOSA Airports : Findings

•  Some Oil Sands companies have been less than inclusive in sharing their future plans or aviation statistics with both provincial and federal agencies.

•  Federal regulators are showing an increasing

interest in AOSA aviation : largely predicated upon their regulatory mandate to ensure and enforce aviation safety, and to mitigate risk.

•  The practice of building one airport for each AOSA Oil Sands Project is an inefficient, costly and environmentally unacceptable practice.

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AOSA Airports : Future Directions •  The build out of the surface road network alongside

planned work camp communities will impact the current Fly-In, Fly-Out model. However, AOSA charter pax totals will continue to grow and likely reach 1.3 million by 2020.

•  The practice of operating private, registered airports to continue but those handling CARs 604 or CARs 705 aircraft of >20 pax likely to be operated within Transport Canada Certified Airport standards.

•  Co-use ‘Area’ airports will likely become a future requirement.

•  Area airports likely to provide Wide Area Multilateration.

•  Fort McMurray likely only AOSA airport to handle scheduled pax and cargo services, and the only airport to provide CBSA services.

•  Province should increase its funding envelop for public AOSA airports, including the Fort McMurray airport.

ATHABASCA OIL SANDS AIRPORTS : Trans-con to Bush Strips

THANK YOU : QUESTIONS ?