[TheDude]

CNN Money

January 29, 2008: 05:36 PM EST

TORONTO -(Dow Jones)- Canadian Oil Sands Trust (COS.UN.T) said production from the 315,000 barrels-a-day Syncrude facility in Alberta has been suspended following several instrument freeze-ups as a result of extremely cold weather conditions.

Operation of a number of units has been disrupted. Syncrude expects that it will take several days to fully restore operations.

The counter at their home page showing barrels produced since July '78 is adding ca. 3 barrels per second so are they up and running...?

[pup55]

Good Work, The Dude.

A lot of oil ends up in one of two pipelines, one goes down to one of FTO's refineries, the other through Minnesota (the one that exploded last fall). So, this will impact US inventories at some point.

[sicophiliac]

This global climate of ours is quite an unpredictable animal isn't it? Last summer had record melting of the ice cap in the arctic ocean. Second warmest year on record was 2007 and now we have frigid cold in Canada, cold weather extending all the way down to the gulf coast. We had a reasonably cold winter so far here in northern California with snow levels in the hills going below 2000 feet. Baghdad had snow, northern Saudi Arabia had freezing temperatures and now China too is slammed with a cold winter storm. Is this some sort of anomaly ? perhaps solar dimming?

[joeltrout]

Sounds like global warming to me

joeltrout

[dissident]

While Alberta is freezing, southern Ontario is warmer than normal for late January. Too bad the media never shows a global picture of the jet stream and the associated temperature distribution. So people react to news of cold temperatures in some longitude band and not the warm temperatures in another (no people living on the surface of the seas so who cares...). The only meaningful measure of how cold the winter is would integrate (properly area weighted) the temperature over the hemisphere poleward of 30 degrees and compare year to year.

[WildRose]

Yep, these really cold temperatures (add to them the nasty windchills we've had this week) create problems with a lot of machinery, from the biggest to the smallest pieces. A lot of times, things break down out in the oil and gas field and need to be brought up again as quickly as possible. Imagine working in the middle of a field for a couple of hours in -35 with a windchill of -47! Luckily, the weather here isn't this cold very often.

[Troyboy1208]

Australia had a very hot January

[LastViking]

Yep, these really cold temperatures (add to them the nasty windchills we've had this week) create problems with a lot of machinery, from the biggest to the smallest pieces. A lot of times, things break down out in the oil and gas field and need to be brought up again as quickly as possible. Imagine working in the middle of a field for a couple of hours in -35 with a windchill of -47! Luckily, the weather here isn't this cold very often.

With about 6 days of temp's reaching -45, another prob North of 60 is plastics. Many of 'em became brittle & snap at these temps. And y'know how much plastic is on a car, eh. Brake lines freeze, blocks freeze up on the hwy from apparent wind chill.