how long has it been since they've done that?have they ever been profitable?

the new test facility starts running november

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/081110/t...

HTL Feedstock Test Facility delivered

Ivanhoe's HTL Feedstock Test Facility (FTF) was delivered to Ivanhoe in October, 2008. The FTF is a small (5-15 barrels per day), highly sophisticated HTL facility that will be used for:

    a) low-cost testing of third party crudes from around the world
    b) accurate simulation of targeted commercial operations
    c) generation of new intellectual property, and
    d) process optimization

The FTF, located at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, is expected to begin processing oil in late November, with full commissioning targeted for December. Confirmatory runs on Belridge heavy oil and Athabasca bitumen are anticipated to take place in January and February of 2009; these tests are intended to calibrate the facility against data the Company has generated in the Commercial Demonstration Facility (CDF) in California

after rereading that article that mentioned mexico,im afraid david martin may have been grossly misquoted.it also says in the article that martin says they will produce oil in ec in 12 months..on the CC he said its possibble but highly unlikely.also seeing the part of test runs a FTF in jan and feb. looks like that may, i say MAY be the first test runs at the new facility.therefore putting any 3rd parties crude to be tested after IVAN'S own test runs,re:march.who knows? they could run some samoples from mexico /oman in december .but still lots of analysis to be done on the end product by the interested parties.imho i dont expest to see mexico oman by year end...