CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Athabasca Oil Sands Corp has won regulatory capitulation for a MacKay River oil sands project, opening a one-month window that could outcome in a state-owned Chinese partner holding full control of a development.
As partial of a prior appropriation deal, Athabasca and a joint-venture partner, PetroChina, have options to trade a Canadian company's 40 percent seductiveness in a 150,000 tub a day plan in northern Alberta during a strike cost of C$680 million ($665 million).
If possibly a put or call options get exercised, Athabasca would have to repay loans modernized by PetroChina, that totaled about C$468 million during a finish of September.
With approvals from a Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board and a provincial sourroundings method in hand, both sides have 30 days to confirm either to lift a trigger on a put or call options. Athabasca has pronounced that if options for MacKay River and another incomparable project, called Dover, are exercised, 3 of a other, 100-percent owned, prospects would be entirely funded.
Athabasca's projects are partial of a rush of developments blending Canadian resources and Asian money.
"Obviously it's a unequivocally element eventuality for us and we unequivocally can't criticism on a probable outcome, though both parties are looking during a possibilities," Sveinung Svarte, Athabasca's arch executive, told Reuters.
Athabasca has pronounced that if all positions sojourn a same, it would spend C$187 million on MacKay River in 2012. Construction on a 35,000 bpd initial proviso is scheduled to start subsequent month with initial prolongation slated for 2014.
MacKay River is a steam-assisted sobriety drainage project, in that steam is pumped into a belligerent to disencumber adult a tar-like bitumen so it can upsurge to a aspect in wells.
Construction costs are approaching to be around C$37,000 per daily tub of crude, that is in line with Devon Energy Corp's recently announced enlargement of a Jackfish project, Svarte said.
That would put a cost of initial proviso of MacKay River during about C$1.3 billion.
Steam-driven projects are not as labor- and materials-intensive as those involving mining, bitumen descent and upgrading plants, so they are not as receptive to cost overruns, he said. Also, most of a apparatus is fabricated in a United States, pided from a aloft costs compared with Alberta's flourishing boom.
PetroChina is one of several Asian companies with investments in Canadian oil sands resources and developers.
China, Thailand, South Korea and Japan are among countries flocking to Canada as a fast source of appetite supply and one that has welcomed unfamiliar investments. A obstacle so far, however, has been a miss of a supply track to a Pacific from a oil sands deposits of Alberta.
Next month, open hearings are scheduled to start for a initial new plan directed during shipping vast volumes of oil sands-derived wanton to Canada's West Coast, Enbridge Inc's C$5.5 billion Northern Gateway proposal.
Athabasca shares fell 1 Canadian cent to C$12.11 on a Toronto Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
(Additional Reporting by Aftab Ahmed in Bangalore)
(Editing by Peter Galloway)
News referensi http://news.yahoo.com/athabasca-oil-sands-gets-regulatory-nod-key-alberta-120053025.html
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