As the price of oil drops, so does the CA$. For every penny the CA$ drops relative to the US$, our NPV is improved by $75 million (at 8% discount.)

Yesterday we were down to about 88 cents, so 12 X 75 = $900 million. Add that to the $513M and the project is starting to look a lot better. Then think about the NPV at 5%, which is already $1.695M and it is finally looking like a much better project. That's without the optimizations.

With the doomsayers claiming oil is going down for a long time this might actually keep our CA$ low long enough to benefit us during the payback period.

Also, from Teck's pov, their Fort Hills project is suddenly looking less good and they might be wanting a better hedge against that investment, so why not Schaft Creek?