EnCana has been working on a new expansion at their facility in the Weyburn oilfield, located near Goodwater. Darcy Cretin, operations supervisor for the Weyburn facility, said that the $60 million project started in mid-2006 and should be completed by January of 2008.

"The main things that we are adding is more carbon dioxide (CO2) compression units," said Cretin. "The 18,000-horsepower compression units allow us to recycle the CO2 that has been injected into the oilfield, so we can compress it and reuse it."

This has been the first major expansion to the facility since the initial project moved out to that location in 1999. Along with this project is a new office facility expansion, a $4 million project that will have 18,000 square feet, enough for 60 full-time employers, which should be completed by the spring of 2008.

The expansion project also allowed EnCana Corporation to start a $15 million field roll-out project in 2007, to prepare new areas of the Weyburn oilfield for CO2 injection. "Right now we are only injecting a third of the field, but we hope to expand that to two-thirds of the field in the future," said Cretin.

The other big thing for EnCana will be their continuation to have a yearly well program, since their well project started in 2003. "It is about an $80 million oil program," said Cretin. "With EnCana targeting the areas where CO2 has mobilized the oil and hasn't been recovered yet."

Since starting the yearly well program, EnCana has drilled 140 wells in the Weyburn oilfield, with results having been very successful in the production of those wells and plan on drilling an additional 45 wells this year.

EnCana's Weyburn oilfield operation covers 70 square miles and is one of the largest medium-sour crude oil reservoirs in Canada, containing approximately 1.4 billion barrels or original oil in place. It is also the world's largest greenhouse gas sequestration site, utilizing CO2 as a solvent to recover higher volumes of oil than was previously possible.

The unit has undergone extensive development, notably waterflooding and multi-leg horizontal well drilling, with the expansion of CO2 compression units being the most recent project. In 2006, the unit produced an average of 29,708 barrels (gross) of oil per day from approximately 635 wells.