Summary Recently Syncrude Canada Limited announced that it's new Aurora Mine Project would extract bitumen from an oil sand lease located about 35 kilometers from it's current Mildred Lake operations in Northern Alberta. One possible way of shipping bitumen from the remote extraction plant to Mildred Lake would be to reduce the viscosity of bituminous froth by adding naphtha and then pipelining naphtha-diluted froth to Mildred Lake for further separation and recovery of clean bitumen. A pilot-scale test program involving pipeline transportation of naphtha-diluted froth was carried out to investigate the effect of mechanical shearing, in the pipeline and pump, on it's processability. Processability refers to the response of pipelined froth to separation in a centrifuge lIPS type of separator and is measured by the water content in the product from such a step. Besides the pilot study, bench scale mixing tests were also carried out by varying energy input to simulate the pipeline wall shear. Test results indicate that the peak shear rate applied in pumping using a centrifugal pump can cause significant processability problems as noted in a four-fold increase in water content of the product. However, this problem can be prevented either by the addition of demulsifying chemical to the froth feed prior to being subjected to high shear rate or by the selection of a low speed and low head centrifugal pump or progressive cavity pump. Results also show that factors which increase the viscosity of naphtha-diluted froth, such as low naphtha-to-bitumen ratio (0.4) and low temperature (2Sc), will cause processability problem even with the progressive cavity pump and can only be prevented through the addition of a demulsifier. INTRODUCTION Syncrude Canada Limited is currently evaluating the development of an oilsand lease located about 35 kilometers from it's current Mildred Lake operation in Northern Alberta. This effort is known as the Aurora Mine project. Conceptually, there are four products that the new mine could ship to Mildred Lake operation for further separation and upgrading to Syncrude Sweet Blend (synthetic crude oil), namely, I) mined oilsand, 2) oilsand slurry, 3) bitumen froth and 4) naphtha-diluted clean bitumen. Bitumen froth production was found to be the most economical option because it can make use of the existing froth-treatment facilities at Mildred Lake operation. The technology components involved in the bitumen froth production option are: oilsand slurry preparation at about 25 °C, bitumen froth generation at about 25 °C, heating and deaerating froth at about 50 °C and transporting to the current lease for froth-treatment and upgrading. The froth transportation component itself has several alternatives, namely:as-produced froth pipelining at about 25 °C to 80 °C,pipelining naphtha-diluted froth at about 25 °C to 80 °C,heated (>100 °C) froth pipelining andconversion of froth into oil-in-water emulsion and pipelining. Based on economic and technical uncertainties assessments, the as-produced froth pipelining (known as core-annular flow) option was selected as the base case with the naphtha-diluted froth pipelining as the back-up technology.