Category:

Asian investment in Canadian oil sands seen to return in new form in 2014

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 […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Canadian Natural Upgrader Cost Increases by Almost 50%

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNQ) said a 50,000-barrel-a-day oil-sands plant backed by the Alberta government will cost C$8.5 billion ($8 billion), almost 50 percent more than estimated previously, and be delayed. The startup date of the Sturgeon upgrader and refinery in Redwater, Alberta, will be pushed back to September 2017 from mid-2016. Both Canadian Natural and the Alberta government have agreed to inject further capital in the form of debt financing into the project, according to a company release. “The project remains a good deal for taxpayers,” Alberta Energy Minister Ken Hughes said in an e-mailed statement. “With the persistent discount on bitumen — the bitumen bubble — and equally persistent high prices for transportation fuels, we continue to expect a better return for Albertans’ barrels of bitumen through this enterprise than if we simply took the royalties in cash.” The Alberta government receives a portion of its oil […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Energy companies assessing emerging Canadian shale

CALGARY, Alberta, Dec. 2 (UPI) — It’s too soon to fully assess the Duvernay shale area in Canada but “sweet spots” are being investigated, says an analyst for energy consultancy Wood McKenzie. “There still is a large amount of delineation drilling to do, or basically just appraising and figuring out where the sweet spots are,” Andy McConn said in an interview published Friday by the Financial Post. The Alberta Geological Survey estimates the Duvernay shale reserve area holds more than 440 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and nearly 62 billion barrels of oil. The newspaper reports energy company Encana Corp. plans to spend more than $500 million on exploratory operations in the Duvernay region. Chevron said it was encouraged by its preliminary efforts in Duvernay, which it described as a source of future growth for its Canadian operations. “They [Chevron] haven’t given hard plans yet, but that’s a […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Robert Rapier: How Alberta’s Oil Sands are Produced

Introduction I spent the first week of November in the heart of the Athabasca oil sands around Fort McMurray, Alberta. I was there as a guest of the Canadian government, which hosts annual tours for small groups of journalists and energy analysts. In the previous two articles, I covered some of the environmental issues arising from the development of the oil sands. In  Oil Sands and the Environment – Part I  I discussed greenhouse gas emissions, impacts on wildlife, and I touched upon water usage. I also detailed some of the work of  Pembina Institute  (PI), which is working to improve the environmental conditions as the oil sands are developed. In Oil Sands and the Environment – Part II  I covered the tailings ponds, water consumption, impacts to water quality, and impacts to indigenous people. Today I want to discuss the actual process of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Canada at Crossroads in Bid to Become Energy Superpower

Canada ’s bid to become what Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls an energy “superpower” is at risk as approval delays for new pipelines threaten an industry already hurt by high costs and rival production. The world’s sixth-largest crude producer can’t get its surging crude supplies to markets in Asia where prices are higher than in North America. Decisions in the next year or so on proposed pipelines designed to connect oil-sands production to supertankers on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts may set the tone for the future of the nation’s energy industry. “There’s no doubt that over the next 12 to 24 months, there will be some significant decisions made on pipelines infrastructure in Canada,” Ian Anderson, president of the Canadian division of Kinder Morgan (KMP) Energy Partners LP, said in a Nov. 29 interview in Lake Louise, Alberta. “What’s important about the time frame is, there’s a window […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Canada’s Cenovus Energy Seeks to Cut Costs, Double Production in Less Than a Decade

Cenovus Energy Inc. aims to bring methods more common to the factory floor to Alberta’s oil sands in a bid to cut costs per barrel by up to half and double production in less than a decade. “What we want to do is take manufacturing techniques, where we use the same template over and over again, for [building] mostly the same surface facilities” for equipment needed to extract oil from deep underground, Chief Executive Brian Ferguson […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Canada's Cenovus Energy Seeks to Cut Costs, Double Production in Less Than a Decade

Cenovus Energy Inc. aims to bring methods more common to the factory floor to Alberta’s oil sands in a bid to cut costs per barrel by up to half and double production in less than a decade. “What we want to do is take manufacturing techniques, where we use the same template over and over again, for [building] mostly the same surface facilities” for equipment needed to extract oil from deep underground, Chief Executive Brian Ferguson […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Chinese energy giant eyes Canadian natural gas project

The deal is already facing backlash from a prominent environmentalist and First Nations rights advocate The Chinese oil and gas company Sinopec is in talks to buy a stake in a $15 billion natural gas export project in British Columbia. Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg/Getty Images China’s largest state-owned oil and gas company, Sinopec, is reportedly in talks to invest in a multibillion-dollar natural gas export project in North America. An advocate for First Nations rights and environmental protectionism told Al Jazeera that China’s burgeoning investment in Canadian energy is facilitating a free-trade agreement that would essentially allow Beijing to nullify Canadian indigenous peoples’ rights to resources. A Sinopec executive in North America acknowledged that the company is in talks to buy a stake in the $15 billion Kitimat LNG project — which liquefies natural gas for ease of transport — in northern British Columbia, but declined to comment, saying all media […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Nuclear waste burial debate produces odd alliances

Ordinarily, a proposal to bury radioactive waste in a scenic area that relies on tourism would inspire “not in my backyard” protests from local residents – and relief in places that were spared. But conventional wisdom has been turned on its head in the Canadian province of Ontario, where a publicly owned power company wants to entomb waste from its nuclear plants 2,230 feet below the surface and less than a mile from Lake Huron. Some of the strongest support comes from Kincardine and other communities near the would-be disposal site at the Bruce Power complex, the world’s largest nuclear power station, which produces one-fourth of all electricity generated in Canada’s most heavily populated province. Nuclear is a way of life here, and many residents have jobs connected to the industry. Meanwhile, the loudest objections are coming from elsewhere in Canada and the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple