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The Canadian Energy Research Institute figures that a “realistic” target for oil sands production by 2043 is 5.3 million barrels per day, almost a five-fold increase over the next 34 years, hitting 1.7 million bpd in 2015 and 4.5 million bpd by 2030. That forecast lags far behind earlier CERI targets, which counted on 5 million bpd by 2015 if all announced projects were completed. But, if its updated scenario is accurate, CERI estimates the Alberta government could collect C$852 billion in royalties; capital outlays would total C$309 billion and the industry might face a bill for greenhouse gas compliance...

The latest World Energy Outlook study released by the Energy Information Agency on Tuesday is like a rich chowder because there are lots of interesting pieces of information, each with their own flavour and bound to have an impact on future energy markets. But first, let’s say that the IEA has been adhering to the ‘forecast early, forecast often’ principle in the last year in the context of looking at future demand for oil and natural gas. The annual WEO happens to be the most comprehensive of this practice. The trouble with forecasting, as the recent Nobel Prize winners in...

CALGARY - It’s tough to think of a skilled labour shortage in the midst of an economic downturn rife with unemployment, but the federal government is moving to address chronic staffing problems in the petroleum sector now, well ahead of an anticipated rebound. With growth in the petroleum industry anticipated to eclipse available skills and labour, the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada has received $405,797 in federal funds to support a project that gives companies the resources they need to recruit, retain and develop their workforce. The funding infusion, from the federal sector council program, is earmarked for the...

Steadily rising oil prices will combine with lower costs to put some of the more than $100 billion in cancelled oilsands projects back on the front burner, according to a new study. “I think we’re going to see over the next six to eight months more projects coming on,” said research director David McColl of the Canadian Energy Research Institute. CERI’s oilsands supply cost and development projects update report released Tuesday estimates under its “realistic” scenario that $309 billion will be spent over the next 35 years to increase output from 1.4 million barrels of synthetic crude and bitumen per...

CALGARY -- Suncor Energy Inc. is moving forward on a new tailings pond technology that it believes will rapidly speed up its ability to reclaim the areas of northern Alberta it has strip mined as it extracts bitumen buried beneath the earth's surface. Tailings are a toxic byproduct in oil sands mining operations. They are a mixture of fine clay, sand, water, and residual bitumen that are contained in giant ponds. Before an oil sands operation can reclaim the area it has mined, the tailings have to dry, a process that now takes decades. When the tailings are dry, the...

As a displaced Northern Californian, one that's proud of our state's long leadership on matters of environment and science, I can't help but wonder at the lack of factual context and analysis in Mark Morford's piece on oil sands. The Canadian oil sands are a large industrial project, and they present environmental challenges. We do not deny that, like other energy production, the oil sands are greenhouse gas intensive. But Mr. Morford's characterizations are out of step with the facts. The oil sands account for five per cent of Canada's emissions, Canada accounts for two per cent of global emissions,...

CALGARY - Canada will apply existing foreign ownership laws to PetroChina’s bid to buy Canadian oilsands assets but will not introduce further barriers to investing in the country, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Tuesday. PetroChina, the world’s most valuable oil company, is set to pay $1.9 billion for a 60 per cent stake in two planned Canadian oilsands projects. It’s the biggest Chinese investment yet in Canada’s oilsands, which have reserves second only to Saudi Arabia, and a test of the Canadian government’s bid to thaw once-frosty relations with Beijing. Harper said he recognized that PetroChina’s plans were controversial, but...

Energy: We balk at importing "dirty" oil from Canada, but others aren't so reluctant. Exempt as a "developing" nation from Kyoto-like agreements, China has decided to help Canada develop its energy-rich oil sands.The Financial Post reports that PetroChina International Investment Co. has struck a deal to buy a 60% interest in Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.'s McKay River and Dover projects for $1.9 billion. China has been establishing energy beachheads around the world in its quest to keep its growing economy fueled. With possible conflict brewing between Israel and Iran, Beijing recognizes the need for reliable suppliers like Canada in an...

CALGARY -- China has used its significant financial firepower to once again wiggle its way into Canada's oil sands, home to the largest source of crude outside Saudi Arabia. PetroChina International Investment Company Ltd. has struck a deal to buy a 60% working interest in Athabasca Oil Sands Corp.'s MacKay River and Dover oil sands projects for $1.9-billion, as well as "certain financing arrangements" for AOSC. "Oil sands projects are very capital-intensive long-term investments and difficult to fully finance in the traditional equity market," said Bill Gallacher, AOSC's chairman said in a statement. "AOSC therefore decided to look for joint...

In the tense debate between energy security and environmental sustainability, Canada’s vast oil sand reserves hold a special place. Canada has the second-largest petroleum deposits after Saudi Arabia and the biggest in the Western hemisphere. Its oil sands produce 1.3 million barrels of oil a day, up from 600,000 a day in 2000. As a result, Canada has become the biggest foreign oil supplier to the United States, accounting for 19 percent of imports in 2008. But the development of these sands in the Alberta region has also been sharply criticized by ecological groups, local communities and even Catholic bishops,...

Costs in Canada's pricey oil sands are starting to fall but nervous developers are still leery of giving the green light to stalled projects. Last week, Husky Energy Inc. (HSE.T) said estimated costs for its proposed Sunrise oil sands development -- a joint venture with BP PLC (BP) -- had nearly halved to C$2.5 billion, from earlier projections of C$4.5 billion. The company is the first to provide hard numbers but there is plenty of informal chatter of cost savings within Alberta's oil sands following the wave of project cancellations and delays at the end of last year. "We're hearing...

Today's labour surplus in Canada's energy sector could prove an even bigger problem down the road, when the current industry downturn fades and demand for workers begins its cyclical rebound. At present, more layoffs are looming as companies keep multibillion-dollar oilsands projects on the shelf and hold off on natural gas drilling plans due to low prices. Officials fear the gloomy outlook will prompt blue-collar and white-collar workers alike to leave the industry for less cyclical employment, spelling a return to costly labour shortages when conditions improve. "That is a concern, and that is why companies are trying to hold...

Canadian National Railway Co. has developed a transformative strategy it calls the "Pipeline on Rail" that can move oil-sands production quickly and cheaply to markets in North America or Asia. Currently, pipelines charge $17.95 per barrel to ship oil from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Estimates are that the increase in pipeline capacity to four million barrels a day from the oil sands to the Gulf of Mexico would cost about $25-billion to build and take years to complete. CN could gear up its capacity to ship by rail up to four million barrels a day of oil at...

Suncor reported today that production at its oil sands facility during March averaged approximately 297,000 barrels per day (bpd). Year-to-date oil sands production at the end of March averaged approximately 278,000 bpd. Suncor is targeting average oil sands production of 300,000 bpd (+5%/-10%) in 2009. In addition to Suncor's proprietary production of sweet and sour synthetic crude oil, diesel and non-upgraded bitumen sold directly to the market, reported production also includes products derived from bitumen received from Petro-Canada for processing on a fee-for-service basis. On a monthly basis, Suncor reports production numbers from its oil sands operation in order to...

Sinking commodity prices will deal a massive blow to Alberta's resource revenues this year, with the province facing its biggest drop in at least two decades. In its first full year under the new royalty regime, the provincial government fore-cast total energy revenues will fall by more than half to $5.9 billion in 2009-10. The biggest hit will come from natural gas -- down 40 per cent to $3.7 billion. But prices, hovering at multi-year lows, may not even meet the province's current forecasts. "Natural gas is the biggest part of the royalty revenue stream,"said Gary Leach, executive director of...

Japan and Venezuela deepened ties Monday with a wide-ranging set of energy cooperation agreements and projects as a summit meeting between the two countries took place in Tokyo. Japan's government-backed Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp., or Jogmec, and five Japanese companies signed Monday agreements with Venezuela's state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, on joint energy study projects. The signings followed a meeting earlier in the day between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Japan's prime minister Taro Aso. The agreements are about feasibility studies to develop Orinoco Tar and an offshore natural gas block, said officials...

The purchase of an additional 10% interest in the proposed Northern Lights oilsands project Wednesday by China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (Sinopec) points to a renewal of interest by the Chinese in Canada's oil, said a University of Alberta expert. Total SA said yesterday it sold the stake for an undisclosed amount to "expand its co-operation" with the Chinese firm. As a result of the transaction, Total and Sinopec will each hold 50% of Northern Lights, a proposed mining project in northern Alberta that was once expected to cost $10.7-billion for a mine and upgrader. Total, which remains the operator,...

But my party – my government – lied to me. The party I have supported since becoming politically aware has destroyed my trust in them. I find myself as many Albertans do today, wondering if the next sound bite or government statement is the truth or another ‘its in the courts’ untruth.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday unveiled draft climate change legislation to slash America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, setting the stage for a protracted and intense political debate in Washington that has potentially major consequences for Canada’s energy industry. The 648-page draft bill would establish a carbon cap-and-trade system to help industry achieve the greenhouse gas reductions, but sidesteps the politically explosive issue of how new emissions credits would be distributed to U.S. companies. The legislation would also impose low-carbon standards for gasoline and other transportation fuels, rules that could make it...

Encana Corp. and ConocoPhillips are asking regulators to approve a 120,000-barrel-per-day expansion of the Christina Lake thermal oilsands project in Alberta. EnCana and its partner are looking for environmental clearance for plans to expand the Christina Lake site in Alberta's northeast, one of the projects included in a joint venture the two companies formed in 2007. The planned three new phases of the thermal oilsands project will raise production to 218,000 barrels a day, using steam assisted gravity drainage techniques, in which steam is pumped into the ground to liquefy the tar-like bitumen, which can then be pumped to the...

The Alberta government needs to admit it made a mistake when it implemented higher oil and gas royalties on Jan. 1 and try to repair the damage it has caused, says Wilf Gobert, new chairman of Calgary Economic Development. But it won’t do that, the former investment banker said in a morning speech Wednesday, because of poor advice from a less-talented bureaucracy and a prevalent suspicion in the Edmonton-based government of any suggestions originating with the Calgary oilpatch elite. The result, he said, will be continuing erosion of provincial royalties and more deficits in a province where they were once...

The oilsands have become a “visible and convenient target” for environmentalists who ignore the economic benefits and advances in technology already underway, the head of Canada’s biggest oil lobby group said Tuesday. Facing a growing campaign against “dirty oil,” David Collyer, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, took aim at oilsands critics in a speech to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce. “Let’s be honest, it has become the whipping boy for the ‘off oil’ movement and greenhouse gas concerns,” Collyer said. “We are going to be using significant quantities of hydrocarbons for some time to come, so this...

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has fired back at this month’s lead article in the current issue of National Geographic magazine, which takes aim at the environmental impact of the oilsands. It might have taken a little longer than some would have hoped – news of the article appeared in advance of its appearance on newsstands – but the three page missive entitled National Geographic: An Incomplete Perspective does a good job of pointing out the gaps in the National Geographic piece. It notes, for example, that the article did not address the fact that some lands have been...

Complete with what has been described as ‘stark’ photos of tailing ponds, made famous by the discovery of about 500 dead ducks that caused every leftwing granola eaters head to explode, the article itself is said to contain the fair and balanced description of the scene – smoke stacks and mills chugging away – as ‘dark’ and, I’m not kidding here, ‘satanic’.

It opens to a three-page aerial spread of pristine boreal forest dotted with lakes beaming through the trees as a luminescent robin-egg blue. This is the "before" picture. Flip over the fold-out at the front of this month's National Geographic magazine and you're confronted by the "after" photo, a ground zero of environmental devastation, with sickly grey ponds bisected by slick roadways prowled by mammoth trucks carrying now-discounted black gold. This photo shoot for the magazine's influential global audience is described as the "baby-seal moment" for Alberta's oilsands, a public relations hell equal to a seal pup's skull-clubbing death that...

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has cut its forecast for the country's oil sands output for the second time this year after falling prices led to a spate of project deferrals and cancellations. The association, which represents most of Canada's big oil producers, said it expects the oil sands to produce 2.4 million barrels per day in 2015, down from the 2.8 million bpd it had forecast in June -- a figure that was itself cut from a 2007 outlook calling for 3 million barrels of daily production. Canada's oil sands contain the biggest crude reserves outside the Middle...

Shell says it is launching a pilot program that could eliminate nearly half of the carbon dioxide output of a key plant in its Canadian oil sands operations. Shell began drilling test wells this month that will inject carbon dioxide from its Scotford upgrader plant deep into a porous rock formation where it will be trapped. Officials say the project could trap about 40 percent of the Alberta plant's emissions by 2014. The Seattle Times reported Sunday that carbon dioxide is a significant drawback to the development of oil sands. The processing of the oil-soaked dirt in plants such as...

Canada's oil sands are arguably worth nearly $1.5 trillion, or more than four times the official estimate, a think tank said Monday. The Canadian Center for the Study of Living Standards placed that value on the energy source despite the recent drop in world oil prices, Canwest news service reported. The official assessment by Statistics Canada is just $342 billion. But the center says the federal agency underestimates the amount of oil the sands contain. Given the oil sands importance, it is essential to value them appropriately," the report said, adding the agency should review its methodology. The center contends...

Canada plans to send an oil and gas business delegation next week to Kuwait with the hopes of forging new commercial hydrocarbon partnerships, the Canadian Embassy in Kuwait said Tuesday in a statement carried by the official news agency KUNA. The 30-member oil and gas delegation organized by the Alberta Ministry of International an Intergovernmental Relations, Export Development Canada, and Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada will visit Kuwait October 28-31 with the aim of promoting collaboration while exploring new business partnerships between the two countries, the embassy said. In their meetings with Kuwaiti representatives, the Canadian delegation expects to...

Nexen Inc and Opti Canada Inc have postponed a decision to expand their new Long Lake, Alberta, oil sands project, citing the financial market crisis and uncertainty over costs to curb carbon emissions, a Nexen official said on Monday. The partners in the C$6.1 billion ($5.1 billion) development, which is now in start-up mode, had expected to decide by the end of this year whether to begin work on twinning the project. There's no new clarity on climate change at all and we also had the meltdown in the market," Nexen spokesman Michael Harris said. "Now we're thinking maybe we...

A Houston company is proposing to build what it calls the world's first "green refinery" on the Texas Gulf Coast using an established technology it says could revolutionize the way transportation fuels are made. The proposal, by Hunton Energy, envisions a refinery with the capacity to convert 340,000 barrels per day of Canadian bitumen crude oil into clean-burning jet and diesel fuel. Its defining feature is the integration of a gasification facility, which would capture most of the plant's carbon emissions before they reach the atmosphere. Hunton previously announced plans to build a $2.8 billion gasification facility at Dow Chemical...

CALGARY -- It helped lead the Montgomery bus boycotts, when Rosa Parks was ordered to move to the back. It organized the Freedom Rides, as white and black students defied discriminatory laws on interstate travel. It orchestrated sit-ins at segregated lunch counters; the March on Washington, when King said he had a dream; and Black voter-registration drives in the face of Southern Jim Crow laws-where three of its young members were notoriously murdered by the Klan, as depicted in the film Mississippi Burning. And this week, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of America's oldest and largest civil rights...

The US Bureau of Land Management issued a final programmatic environmental impact statement Sept. 4 to guide the use of public land containing oil shale and tar sands in three western states. Reactions ranged from applause to expressions of concern. The document, which BLM developed under Section 369[d] of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, amends 12 land-use plans in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming to set aside 1.9 million acres of public land for potential commercial oil shale development, the US Department of the Interior agency indicated. One of the next steps would be to complete rules to govern procedures for...

"When it comes to action over Georgia, Russia has the European Union over a barrel. In fact, 1.2 million barrels. That’s how much Russian crude is pumped westward every day down the Druzhba pipeline to fuel Europe’s economies.” So began an article in The International Herald Tribune, one of many last week explaining why Europe — and the west — has little choice but to sacrifice parts of Georgia, and maybe a lot more, to Russia’s ambitions. “Russia knows that when it comes to conducting a serious foreign and security policy, Europe is all mouth,” says Lord Chris Patten, the...

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, two of the world's richest men, toured Canadian Natural Resources Ltd's (CNQ.TO) Horizon oil sands project near Fort McMurray, Alberta, this week. < > With reserves of about 173 billion barrels, the oil sands are the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East. The region's producers plan to spend more than C$100 billion developing the resource and output is expected to nearly triple to 2.8 million barrels a day by 2015. < >

CALGARY -- Support for Canada's oil sands is coming from an unexpected American group--an anti-poverty coalition led by African-American civil rights and faith leaders. The group is waging a national campaign targeting 50 "extreme" environmental organizations and 100 U. S. politicians it says are restricting energy supplies through climate-change legislation, causing oil prices to spike to levels that are "strangling" the poor. Niger Innis, co-chairman of the "Stop The War On The Poor" campaign and national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the oldest civil rights groups in the United States, said the alliance wants more...

Using the Greenpeace-friendly term ‘dirty oil’ in reference to crude drawn from the sand, the leaders of some American cities took lines that sounded right out of Treehugging For Dummies, stopping just short of equating Alberta’s oil industry with the Final Event of Revelations.....

WASHINGTON AND TORONTO — It's just one sentence buried in an 800-page U.S. energy bill that passed into law last December. Yet it has morphed into a potential threat to Canada's oil sands boom, a contentious political football in Washington, and an early warning sign of an epic environmental battle over bitumen. Stripped to its bare essentials, Section 526 of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 bans federal agencies from buying alternative fuels that produce more greenhouse gases than conventional oil. This would include purchases by the military and the postal service - far and away the...

Junk your SUV and buy an electric scooter. Recent claims by various OPEC leaders that the world has plenty of oil left are bunk, alleges Sadad Al-Husseini, a former top executive at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company. Oil-producing countries are inflating the size of their oil reserves by as much as 300 billion barrels by padding supposedly proven reserves with “probable” reserves and tar and oil sands, according to Husseini. Such hypothetical reserves are “not delineated, not accessible and not available for production,” Husseini said at a recent energy conference in London. Oil production has now reached its...

Refinery expansions in the U.S. focused on processing crude from Canadian oil sands show an entrenched reliance on fossil fuels even as concerns grow about the effects of oil sands production, an environmental group said Wednesday. Such multibillion-dollar investments illustrate a long-term shift in refining toward so-called heavy oil, which requires more energy-intensive production and prompts worries about emissions and waste runoff, the report's authors said. "The first step is to start with awareness of what it means," said Eric Schaeffer, a former Environmental Protection Agency lawyer who is director of the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group that...

HOUSTON -- Americans may show little appreciation or awareness at times of Canada as their top energy supplier, but in this senior global oil industry centre, Canada is hot. It's a big change in sentiment from a few years ago, when U.S. companies would rather cozy up to Russia or the Middle East than tough it out in the frozen north. Now, the size of the oilsands, the strong Canadian currency, even the emerging Horn River natural gas play in northeast British Columbia, a lookalike of the fabulously successful Barnett Shale near Fort Worth, Tex. are big topics of conversation...

CALGARY - Ten years after establishing an in-situ oilsands demonstration plant, Japan Canada Oil Sands Ltd. (Jacos) signalled today it is ready for commercial production. Prompted by surging oil prices and results from a seismic and delineation program over the last two winters, the company said it will increase production at its Hangingstone project by 2014 by up to 35,000 barrels per day over the current 8,000 bpd. "Today's oil price encourages us to look at oilsands development," said executive vice-president Yukio Kishigami, adding more assessment is planned for next winter. Jacos is the operator of the project, which it...

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A top Canadian official sought to calm an international uproar over hundreds of ducks killed at Canada's biggest oil sands plant by promising, at a U.S. oil industry event on Monday, that the incident will not go unpunished. The deaths of 500 ducks last week on a Syncrude Canada Ltd wastewater pond was unacceptable, Industry Minister Jim Prentice said during an acceptance speech after Canada was named "Country of the Year" by Energy Magazine. "We anticipate those responsible will face full scrutiny under Canadian law and, insofar as the government of Canada is concerned, there will...

EDMONTON - TransCanada Corp. alone plans to ship more than one million barrels a day of oilsands production to the United States with an expanded pipeline construction program unveiled today. The Alberta oil and gas delivery mainstay added a second leg to its new Keystone export service that would more than double the system's capacity and extend it to the Texas coast of the Gulf of Mexico. TransCanada president Hal Kvisle said the added route is a companion instead of competition for projects underway by Enbridge Inc., which is also advancing more than one million barrels daily in new oilsands...

Shell’s Canadian oil sands business is suffering a profitability squeeze because of the soaring cost of energy needed to extract bitumen from sand. The oil company’s annual report, published yesterday, reveals that operating expenses at the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Alberta have soared by almost 50 per cent in the two years since 2005, while output at the bitumen mining project has either remained static or declined. Shell’s oil sands profits dipped sharply last year when a fire temporarily reduced the output of its upgrader, a refinery that converts bitumen into a synthetic crude oil. Earnings from oil sands...

Canada has warned the US government that a narrow interpretation of new energy legislation would prohibit its neighbour buying fuel from Alberta’s vast oil sands, with “unintended consequences for both countries”. In a letter to Robert Gates, US defence secretary, Canada said that it “would not want to see an expansive interpretation” of the Energy Independence and Security Act 2007. A copy of the letter, from Michael Wilson, Canadian ambassador, and copied to Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, and Samuel Bodman, US energy secretary, has been obtained by the Financial Times. Section 526 of the law limits US government...

Canada has warned the US government that a narrow interpretation of new energy legislation would prohibit its neighbour buying fuel from Alberta’s vast oil sands, with “unintended consequences for both countries”. Section 526 of the law limits US government procurement of alternative fuels to those from which the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are equal to or less than those from conventional fuel from conventional petroleum sources. Canada’s oil sands are considered unconventional fuels, and producing them emits more greenhouse gas than conventional production.

Canada warns US over oil sands By Sheila McNulty in Houston Published: March 9 2008 20:47 | Last updated: March 9 2008 22:12 Canada has warned the US government that a narrow interpretation of new energy legislation would prohibit its neighbour buying fuel from Alberta’s vast oil sands, with “unintended consequences for both countries”. In a letter to Robert Gates, US defence secretary, Canada said that it “would not want to see an expansive interpretation” of the Energy Independence and Security Act 2007. A copy of the letter, from Michael Wilson, Canadian ambassador, and copied to Condoleezza Rice, US secretary...

More and more oil companies are diving into Canada's oil-soaked sands, eager to capitalize on vast resources in a stable country that welcomes outsiders. In 2007 alone, Royal Dutch Shell, Marathon Oil Corp. and BP increased or established positions in the sands, either to extract the thick, tarlike oil or work with a Canadian producer to refine it in the United States. They joined the slew of Canadian producers as well as ConocoPhillips, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Devon Energy and others that have sands operations or joint ventures. Moratorium suggested But environmental concerns about increases in emissions and possible...

In Texas City, a small port town south of Houston near the Gulf of Mexico, a hub of refineries rises through the misty January air, billowing steam from scrubber towers. These refineries make up part of a sprawling industrial cluster in the Gulf Coast region that is better equipped than anywhere on earth to handle the gooey crude coming out of Alberta's oil sands. In a twisting turn of geography, geology and history, Texans are hungry for Alberta oil. As the U.S. seeks to decrease its dependence on crude from unstable regions and OPEC countries, and with the oil sands...