Suncor Seeks Cost Cutting With Robot Trucks in Oil-Sands Mine
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As part of cost cuts at Suncor Energy Inc., Chief Executive Officer Steve Williams has scrapped items such as a C$11.6 billion ($11 billion) oil-sands plant. Now, he’s looking at savings from mining with robot trucks.
Suncor, Canada’s largest energy company by market value, is the first oil-sands operator to test haul trucks run by computers, said Gary Bunio, Suncor’s general manager of technology development. The move follows steps by miners including Rio Tinto Plc to replace human-operated trucks with driverless vehicles to lower the cost to produce ore.