Our story begins in 1978, when we farmed in on leases held by a group of Oil and Gas company's referred to as the PCEJ Group in the Athabasca area.
JACOS and its partners experimented with cyclic steam stimulation between 1983 to 1994 on the Hangingstone Lease; Participation in the SAGD pilot experiments took underway from 1992 to 1997 at the Underground Test Facility (UTF).
With positive results from the UTF project, JACOS further pursued SAGD technology at the Hangingstone site, which successfully produced 35 million barrels of bitumen between 1999 to 2016.
Based on the success of the pilot project, JACOS approved the Hangingstone Expansion Oil Sands Project. Hangingstone Expansion is a joint venture with JACOS holding a 75% participating interest as the operator and NEXEN Energy ULC holds the remaining 25% interest.
In February 2017, the SAGD Central Processing Facility was complete and ready for production. At the end of April, JACOS started injecting steam into the wells and bitumen production commenced on August 3, 2017.
Bitumen production will continue for around 30 years using the steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) method, which has previously been in practice at the Hangingstone Demonstration operation for more than 15 years.