Canada's oilsands are becoming such significant global oil suppliers there will be a "mad scramble" in coming years to purchase oilsands assets, two new reports predicted yesterday. Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, said the oilsands are poised to become the single biggest contributor to net new global supply by the end of the decade, with growth in production on the drawing board exceeding even that planned by the world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia. "The combination of depleting reserves and sweeping state ownership has left each of the world's six largest publicly traded oil firms looking at declining production over the next two years," the report said. "That sets the stage for a mad scramble for whatever proven reserves the market still has access to. And there are no greater reserves accessible to private investment than the Canadian oilsands."
Meanwhile, a survey of 54 Canadian energy executives and investment bankers by the national law firm, Blake Cassels & Graydon, found there are expectations of higher merger and acquisition activity in the Canadian oilpatch in the next 12 months, driven by American and Chinese investors. Among oil executives, 38% said that their primary corporate strategy in 2006 will be a strategic merger or acquisition. Consolidation is expected to be concentrated among junior oil and gas companies converting into trusts. While M&A activity has been dominated historically by transactions involving conventional assets, the survey found that for the first time the oilsands are emerging as the major target, although there will continue to be nearly as high an interest in conventional oil and gas assets.
(National Post 060111)
Alberta has yet to see the golden days of the oilsands, however, as one of the last megafield hydrocarbon deposits in the world, it will be undoubtedly exploited to an extreme. How this will effect the surrounding environment, water supplies and energy generation in the province is yet to be discussed in any detail. I hope these conversations take place and not get lost in the mad rush to make big money and insane profits.
4 comments:
haha! while we're walking out, suddenly i hear one CRACK sound!! i look down, it was A SNAIL!! REALLY SCARED UNTIL NEARLY DIE!! ='( sorry leh!! very guilty!! im heavy! I KNOW!! lolx. really very sorry ah, snail! =(
Oh...oil sands. When I saw mad scramble for crack, I thought you meant CRACK. Because whenever I need CRACK, it's a mad scramble.
We're talking about rimming right?
I hope Albertans are willing to pay the heavy environmental price for extracting the oilsands... such as hundreds of square miles of polluted unusable land as a result of the strip mining operation. But I guess the oil company executives don't have to live there and drink the water.
So true. We're essentially resigning the biosphere of northern Canada and potentially the long-term health of everyone in western Canada in order to keep all of the SUVs and Hummers on the road. Nice, eh? It's very chilling that people think so little of the consequences of their actions. Oh well, this is destined to come back and bite humanity seriously in the ass. It's only natural that nature will balance things out again, eventually.
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