EnCana, ConocoPhillips in $15B US oilsands joint venture

[CHIMO]

EnCana, ConocoPhillips in $15B US oilsands joint venture
Last Updated: Thursday, October 5, 2006 | 4:14 PM ET
CBC News

EnCana Corp. is joining with ConocoPhillips of the United States to form an oilsands extraction and refining venture.

The two big energy companies said they have formed a 50/50 joint venture that will include EnCana's Foster Creek and Christina Lake heavy oil projects in northeastern Alberta plus ConocoPhillips's Wood River refinery in Roxana, Ill., and the Borger refinery in Borger, Texas.

The two companies said they plan to boost oilsands extraction in the Alberta projects from the current 50,000 barrels per day to 400,000 barrels per day by 2015. EnCana will remain responsible for managing the "upstream" part of the joint venture.

The "downstream", or refining, portion of the venture will be expanded to process 550,000 barrels of heavy oil per day from the current 60,000 barrels. EnCana and ConocoPhillips will jointly own the refining operations, but ConocoPhillips will keep an 85 per cent economic interest in the Borger refinery next year and a 65 per cent stake in 2008.

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2006/10/05/encandaconocophillips.html

Dinning ready to ride?

Alberta PC leadership hopeful Jim Dinning is being perceived as the Calgary Petroleum Club’s trick pony.

Whether it’s true or not won’t be known until Ralph Klein’s former provincial treasurer, Don Getty’s ex-education minister and Peter Lougheed’s one-time briefcase carrier, wins the December vote and starts “premiering.”

By then it will be too late. But at least the little pony has started kicking in his stall, and laid a stern warning on Big Oil. Dinning says that if they plan on digging large holes in the boreal forest north of Fort McMurray they better be prepared to upgrade the bitumen right here in Alberta.

“Frankly, it concerns me when I hear companies planning to ship more of our raw resources for refining in the United States,” Dinning frowned in a speech earlier in the week. (Jim’s talking about you EnCana, BP, Connacher Oil, Imperial Oil and TransCanada Pipelines.) He gave the Calgary oil execs a heads up on what to expect in Jim-berta.

http://edmsun.canoe.ca/Business/Columnists/Waugh_Neil/2006/09/28/1910952.html

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[IthinkThereforeIAM]

1. The pipeline...

... carrying the crude oil to Illinois will pass through North and South Dakota and then turn east and go through Minnesota and/or Iowa. They are already drooling in South Dakota over land access fees/payments and taxing every gallon of crude that touches the South Dakota border.