The Expression of Interest Process
On August 15, 2008 Alberta Energy and Alberta Finance and Enterprise issued a Request for Expressions of Interest (REOI) soliciting interest in using Bitumen Royalty-in-Kind. The expressions of interest were not legally binding and were not a pre-requisite for participation in any future Request for Proposals (RFP).
Submissions were received from both domestic and international companies; most importantly firms expressed interest in:
- Projects to process royalty bitumen to add value within the province (e.g. upgraders, refiners, petrochemicals);
- Projects that requested a secure supply of royalty bitumen for a certain period of time to support or accelerate construction of export pipelines to the west coast;
- Projects to assist in marketing and administration of BRIK.
Government staff reviewed the submissions and found:
- There is interest from industry in using the Province’s BRIK volumes.
- A number of international companies not currently operating in Alberta are potentially interested in upgrading, refining, gasification or chemical production.
- The Province’s value-added processing and potential revenue gains from sharing in differential gain objectives have the potential to be achieved through a BRIK policy.
