Long Lake production target put on hold

Long Lake production target put on hold
Nathan Vanderklippe


To the very long list of Long Lake's woes, add this one: Its owners no longer know when it will reach full production. Through the years of operational problems and resulting delays that have plagued the $6.1-billion oil sands project, Nexen Inc. and OPTI Canada Ltd. have maintained target dates for achieving its designed throughput. At one point, that date was late 2009. Then, late 2010. Yesterday, the market winced when OPTI chief executive officer Chris Slubicki said it won't meet that deadline - and declined to provide a new one. "Many of our operational issues are behind us," he told analysts. "We are expecting through 2010 vastly increasing bitumen and [premium sweet crude] production and that's what's important to us. When that will lead to at or near exactly full capacity is difficult to forecast." For OPTI's long-suffering investors, it was the latest blow to confidence in the project. NXY (TSX) fell 59 cents to $23.40; OPC (TSX) slipped 26 cents to $2.19.