Asian investment in Canada’s oil sands sector, which plummeted this year, will gain momentum in 2014, with sovereign wealth funds rather than state- owned enterprises taking the lead, industry officials said late Wednesday. Total investments in Alberta’s oil sands sector totaled $30 billion in 2012 before falling to about $1 billion in 2013, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. The decline followed a federal government investment guideline issued in late 2012 that restricted majority ownership of Canadian oil sands producers by foreign oil companies, barring “exceptional” circumstances, said Peter Glossop, a partner with Osler, Hoskin and Harcourt, at the 12th Annual Oil Sands Symposium in Calgary. December 7 will be the first anniversary of that announcement and what the industry has seen since is Asian state-owned enterprises, or SOEs, have stopped buying into Alberta’s oil sands sector, he said. “The word […]