The Japanese have oil sands?
Technical expertise on extraction and refining. Marubeni, Mitsui, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, etc.
Japan doesn’t have oil itself, but they build the best refineries and petrochemical plants in the world — and they are always looking at ways to cut their dependency on Middle East crude.
They thought they had a good thing going with Mitsui-Sakalin Island, but Putin and his goons have moved in under the pretext of “environmental concerns” and blackmailed a majority share of the business out of them.
They still expect good things from that project, but given Moscow’s past use of the “energy weapon” in international negotiations, they don’t want to be come to dependent on Russia either.
Bottom line, if Alberta opens up in a big way, the Japanese will want to be in on the ground floor.