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By now, the story is clear. China needs energy to fuel its growing economy, so it looks to places like Canada that are flush with oil and natural gas. That’s long been known.
But because China’s Canadian deals have come bit by bit, it’s easy to lose track of exactly how much they now hold. For a refresher, we went back and looked at what they’ve bought. A few deals may be missed in the list below, but it offers a glimpse of just how much the Chinese have purchased.
2005
Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) coughs up $150-million for a 16.7 per cent stake in MEG Energy Corp. That position fell to 15.2 per cent when MEG went public last summer, however, the company now has much higher valuation after producing about 28,000 barrels of oil a day when it last reported earnings in July.
2009
PetroChina paid $1.9-billion to acquire 60 per cent of two projects that were held by Athabasca Oil Sands. Both were undeveloped projects near Fort McMurray.
Sinopec buys an additional portion of Total SA’s Northern Lights project, raising its stake to 50 per cent.
2010
Sinopec pays $4.65-billion for a 9 per cent slice of Syncrude Canada Ltd., which is the oil sands' second biggest operation.
China Investment Corp. pays $817-million for a 45 per cent stake in an oil sands project owned by Penn West. CIC also buys a 5 per cent stake in Penn West itself for $435-million.
2011
CNOOC bails out OPTI Canada by purchasing it for $2.2-billion. OPTI’s main asset was a 35 per cent interest in Nexen's Long Lake oil sands project.
Sinopec bids $2.2-billion in cash for Daylight Energy Ltd., offering a per share premium of more than 100 per cent. Add in Daylight's debt, and the deal is worth about $3-billion.
PetroChina tries to strike a $5.4-billion joint venture with Encana Corp. to develop vast natural gas reserves in northern British Columbia, but the deal falls through.
Take out the failed Encana deal, and you get about $10-billion Canadian energy investments over the last two years. Would China be allowed to launch a deal for a whole company with a market capitalization worth $10-billion? At this point, no one knows, because the federal government hasn't clarified the foreign investment rules. But China doesn't seem to mind, because it's working around it for the time being. China’s Canadian energy assets are adding up - The Globe and Mail
In a move that reflects a widening rift with Canada’s largest trading partner, a senior Harper government minister is warning that Washington’s decision to postpone a review of the Keystone XL pipeline could doom the project and speed up Ottawa’s efforts to ship oil to Asia instead.
In a move that reflects a widening rift with Canada’s largest trading partner, a senior Harper government minister is warning that Washington’s decision to postpone a review of the Keystone XL pipeline could doom the project and speed up Ottawa’s efforts to ship oil to Asia instead.
Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivered this message from the sidelines of the APEC summit in Honolulu as U.S. foot-dragging over the $7-billion Canadian pipeline’s fate becomes the latest in a string of trade irritants between Canada and the United States.
“The decision to delay it that long is actually quite a crucial decision. I’m not sure this project would survive that kind of delay,” Mr. Flaherty told Bloomberg News.
“It may mean that we may have to move quickly to ensure that we can export our oil to Asia through British Columbia.”
It’s been an awkward few months for Canada-U.S. relations.
First, in September, the Obama administration excluded Canadian firms from bidding on $100-billion (U.S.) worth of U.S. infrastructure contracts in the name of supporting homegrown jobs. In October, the United States announced it would slap a $5.50 tax on Canadians entering by airplane or ship as a way to help reduce Washington’s $1-trillion-plus deficit.
On Thursday, the U.S. State Department compounded Canadian frustrations by announcing it won’t approve or reject the proposed pipeline until after the November, 2012, presidential election – a delay of about 12 to 15 months.
The Keystone project is backed by Calgary’s TransCanada Corp., and would ship up to 700,000 barrels a day from the Alberta oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Massive opposition from landowners along its proposed route and environmental activists has left the Obama administration unwilling to make a tough political call before the next ballot.
The State Department said on Thursday it will study an alternative route to avoid environmentally sensitive areas in Nebraska. Critics argue the proposed route across the Sandhills area would put a water supply for 1.5 million people at risk of contamination.
Mr. Flaherty called Washington’s delay “disappointing” and noted that unions and business groups appear to back the project.
“This project would have provided thousands and thousands of jobs in the United States, a lot of unionized, well-paying jobs,” the minister said.
“The delay, we hope, doesn’t doom the project. We hope it will still happen.”
The Finance Minister’s tough talk of redirecting Canada’s efforts to sell oil toward Asia is not as easy as it sounds.
Public hearings on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to the B.C. coast kick off on Jan. 10, but opposition from aboriginals in British Columbia will ensure the project a rough ride.
Aboriginal groups vow to fight Northern Gateway regardless of whether it receives environmental and technical permits, saying their land rights trump other permits.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, have formed alliances with the native bands and coastal communities opposed to the project.
The assessment process for the Gateway project is slated to visit 23 B.C. communities, with repeat visits to some towns because thousands of people from around the world have registered to participate.
It would also be difficult for the government to compel the National Energy Board, an independent regulator, to speed up the approval process for Gateway.
The U.S. delay for Keystone threatens to extinguish a pipeline that’s been years in the making, giving shippers an opening to abandon it.
That creates serious concern for Canada’s oil producers, which are just years away from running out of room on existing pipelines for their product.
Clearly a politically based decision by Obama to attempt to avoid having to deal with 2 of his historical constituencies(labor and environmentalists) having to fight each other during the upcoming election campaign, thereby costing him votes.
What this action more clearly indicates, and is much more serious in my opinion, is that by changing the rules of the game right at the end of the review process(TCPL has been at this approval process for 39 months now, where recent pipelines applying for the same permit have received theirs in less than half the time, 16 months), the US Govronment is proving they are no better than dealing with the Govronments in Venezuela, Nigeria or Russia.
The US Govronment cannot be trusted as a long term business partner, from an energy perspective, it is high time to build our own refineries and upgraders and 2 or 3 Mega-pipelines to the West Coast, and accelerate the development of our national resource to maintain our standard of living. The US Govronment is turning middle class america into Cuba which seems what The Federal Govronment a wants to do to you guys... So Canada needs to determine our own fate and do what we have to do to save our butt.
No disrespect to Americans since the US Govronment Seems to be screwing American middle class over by not fixing the economy, cutting debt and not creating jobs. Now it has screwed Canada's Middle class over. Since it would of been a boost to both our economies and create more jobs on both sides of the border.
What assurances do we have that if the pipeline is built, America gets the oil? Oil is typically just sold to the highest bidder, meaning we could be taking the environmental hit and not see anything from it.
What assurances do we have that if the pipeline is built, America gets the oil? Oil is typically just sold to the highest bidder, meaning we could be taking the environmental hit and not see anything from it.
you make up the diffrence when you Refine it and we buy some of it and you send it back upstream to Canada also we sell it to you at 20% less than what it is worth on the Open Market.
The second Reason is China is buying up all the oil and Gas it can around the World, So you are then held hostage by Venezuela and the ME and 4 years in the ME (3-4 years to build the XL pipeline ) anything could happen and prices could skyrocket and our current pipelines are already near capacity.
Third all new Drilling in the Gulf has been stopped and to get that bak up again would also take years and China already has a been building a deep sea Drilling Rig in Cuba that is sucking up oil in the Gulf and China has invested in getting their ports built to bring in their supertankers.
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