TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – TSX-V-listed US Oil Sands has committed about $17.9-million in orders for all of the major equipment components required to build its flagship PR Spring oil sands project, in Utah.

The Calgary-based firm on Thursday said, with the long-lead items now on order, engineering and site construction remained on schedule for field commissioning in the third quarter of next year.

To date, the company had substantially completed construction of the plant site and had started foundation and building construction.

"The procurement of long-lead equipment is an important achievement for US Oil Sands as we transition from substantive engineering and design efforts to initiating physical construction of the extraction plant. It's an exciting time for the company as we deploy our capital towards creating a low capital cost and environmentally sustainable oil sands mining project with game-changing potential,” CEO Cameron Todd pointed out.

US Oil Sands said that its procurement and supply chain management group, working closely with its project and construction services manager, Kellogg Brown & Root’s (KBR’s) Salt Lake City-based team, had been successful in holding or reducing delivery times on this equipment, which was critical to meeting scheduled field-delivery dates. Every significant piece of the process equipment had been evaluated to ensure best process performance, delivery time and cost.

Overall project engineering was being performed by KBR, with Stantec and Norwest contributing environmental and mine engineering, respectively.

The company hoped to complete construction of a warehouse before year-end, while utility supply infrastructure and roadways had been completed.

"We have been diligent in the engineering and procurement process such that in addition to keeping on-target with our schedule, we've continued to [improve] the project's design with resultant operational and environmental benefits. This is evident in the decision to replace the plant's power supply with natural-gas-fired turbines that incorporate improved heat recovery from electrical power cogeneration. These improvements will reduce the use of fuel, further enhancing the project's already best-in-class environmental profile,” Todd added.

For the remainder of 2014, the company would continue to focus on detailed engineering of the modules. Management expected that the off-site fabrication of the process extraction plant would start in the first quarter next year, with final off-site fabrication and field assembly pencilled-in for mid-2015, followed by commissioning and commercial start-up.

US Oil Sands had developed an efficient and low-cost process employing a proprietary, environment-friendly process using a biodegradable, citrus-based biosolvent to separate oil from sand.

This process – which employed an extract from orange peels called d-limonene – had resulted in a 96% recovery of bitumen and the elimination of tailings ponds.