There’s something special for Suncor Energy about the approximately 150,000 bbls/d that are currently being produced at the new Fort Hills oilsands mine.

It’s not just that it is a historic project, starting up in the 50th anniversary year of Suncor’s original operations. It’s also a big milestone for the company environmentally.

That’s because Suncor says that production from Fort Hills has a carbon footprint that is on par with the average refined barrel in the United States.

“At Fort Hills we have a different kind of finishing step. Basically what we do at Fort Hills that we don’t do at any of our other mines is we literally cut off about 10 percent of the barrel. The 10 percent that we cut off has the most carbon in it, so we put that carbon back in the ground,” chief operating officer Mark Little told the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday.

“It’s kind of like accelerated carbon sequestration. It’s much easier to do it when it’s still in a liquid form versus creating a greenhouse gas and then trying to capture it and put it back in the ground. So we cut it off, put it back in the ground, and then the barrel that we ship to market is a much better quality barrel.”

The technology is called paraffinic froth treatment (PFT), and Suncor is not the first oilsands operator to have it deployed. It has been in commercial use since Shell started up the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in 2002, and was put to work again at the AOSP Jackpine expansion in 2010 as well as at both operating phases of Imperial Oil’s Kearl mine, which started in 2013 and 2015, respectively. The new owner of the AOSP, Canadian Natural Resources, has announced it is now developing a 35,000 bbl/d PFT expansion at its Horizon mine.

“We have a particular technology that we use on Fort Hills; it produces a higher quality product which we’ve been able to get that premium for,” said Suncor CEO Steve Williams.

“It’s not so different than the Kearl technology that Imperial uses or Exxon uses, or so different than the Shell technology; there are slight variations on it. All of those produce a higher quality, lower carbon footprint material which is moving the whole industry forward. I am really very excited about what’s going on up there.”