Royal Dutch Shell Plc has withdrawn an application to develop an oil-sands bitumen mine in northern Alberta to focus on existing projects.
Shell will continue to hold the Pierre River mining leases and will reapply for regulatory approval “when the time is right,” Shell Canada President Lorraine Mitchelmore said in a statement Monday.
“The Pierre River Mine remains a very long-term opportunity for us but it’s not currently a priority,” she said in the statement.
Shell, whose Canadian operations include service stations and oil-sands mines, is focusing on lowering costs in the country, Mitchelmore said last year. The company produces about 255,000 barrels a days from the oil sands and has regulatory approval to double that figure.
Canadian oil and gas companies have eliminated thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of planned investment as they seek to rein in costs that have made the country one of the most expensive places in the world to produce the fossil fuel. The cuts are a response to crude prices that have fallen by half since June.
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