Canadian Natural Resources Ltd has announced that the company is still targeting first synthetic crude oil production from its Horizon Oil Sands Project by the end of the year. Most aspects of the project are complete, including the mining operation, which has already delivered 300,000 metric tons of oil sands to the plant for equipment-testing purposes. The majority of the processing plants are either fully commissioned or well into commissioning. The remaining tasks involve a few of the project’s hydrotreaters. The gas oil hydrotreating plant (Plant 43) is complete and is currently completing electrical heat tracing and insulation. The distillate hydrotreater (Plant 42) is mechanically complete, but will not begin operation until early next year. The company intends to deliver light, sweet crude to a third-party pipeline by the end of the year and hopes to see the facility operating at 50%-60% in the first quarter of 2009, ramping up production to full capacity later in the year.