1 September 2009
Stemming the loss of value-added business
The Alberta government wants to buy 300,000 b/d of its own oil sands' bitumen to fuel a domestic upgrading and refining sector
ALBERTA wants to process more of its bitumen in the province. On the line is whether Canadian or US refineries will control the majority share of a possible 2m barrels a day (b/d) of incremental oil-sands production over the next decade, along with thousands of jobs and billions of investment and revenue dollars. But it is a race against time for a government that is trying to reverse its own policies of promoting the construction of pipelines to ship increasing volumes of bitumen to the US for processing into synthetic crude and transportation fuels. The sense of urgency has intensified over the past 18 months. Oil-sands producers EnCana and Husky have formed joint ventures with ConocoPhill
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