By Gordon Jaremko,
CanWest News Service
EDMONTON — Alberta’s youngest oilsands mega-mine set out Friday to grow briskly by 65 per cent even though expansion costs have skyrocketed.
About 6,000 to 7,000 construction workers will build a 100,000-barrels-a-day addition to the Athabasca Oil Sands Project over the next four years on a schedule laid out by senior partner Shell Canada. The giant job will be divided equally between the three-year-old operation’s Fort McMurray open-pit mine and Scotford bitumen upgrader east of Edmonton, Shell president Clive Mather and oilsands vice-president Brian Straub told a conference call for financial analysts and media.