Despite price drops and pipeline uncertainty, oil sands companies are still planning on going full speed ahead with expansion.
The Calgary Herald reports that despite natural gas and conventional oil drilling slowing down, oil sands producers weren’t looking at making changes at last week’s TD Securities Energy conference.
ConocoPhillips is planning more than two billion dollars of new investment, and increasing production at its Christina Lake-Foster Creek joint venture fivefold in the next five years.
A TD analyst told the paper that only the mid-level and smaller companies are likely to see any pullback at all.
Imperial Oil says it sees the oil sands as a long-term investment.
It says building the Kearl project when oil was as low as 40 dollars a barrel turned out to be a smart idea because they controlled their costs better.
Suncor still expects to add 200 thousand barrels per day just from its thermal in-situ projects within the next three years.
And it says if it manages to reverse a pipeline from Montreal to Sarnia, Ontario, it could get oil to its refinery in Quebec by 2014.
Published July 16, 2012
