China Buys Out Conoco's Share of Syncrude

The government regulates when it shouldn't and doesn't when it should. Our energy dependence may one day be as vital an issue as National Security. It isn't at that point, but it should be, we've been walking on the ledge since 1975.

For 35 years our government has dallied instead of getting serious about making us beholding to no one for our energy needs as a nation.

Conoco Phillips sold a 9.03% stake in Canada's oil sands project, to China of all countries. In case you don't know, we import more oil from Canada than we do from any other country. Mexico is second. Now some of that once American/Canadian oil is going to be China/Canadian oil that we will now buy from them.

China with our import dollars, is on a world wide natural resource buying spree. They are buying alumininum interests in Australia, farm lands in Africa, and oil interests from any and everywhere. That spells global competition and higher prices for commodities.

Conoco could have done it's patriotic part, and retained it's part ownership in Syncrude. Selling oil is afterall what this company does for a living.

Steve

Here's some details:


ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) announced today that it has entered into definitive agreements with subsidiaries of Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Company (SIPC) to sell its 9.03 percent interest in Syncrude for $4.65 billion. The transaction is anticipated to close in the third quarter of 2010 once Canadian and Chinese government approvals are obtained.
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Syncrude Our Business:


The Syncrude operations are located on the Athabasca Oil Sands Deposit in northeastern Alberta, Canada.

Oil sand is composed of sand, bitumen, mineral rich clays and water. Bitumen, in its raw state, is a black, asphalt-like oil — as thick as molasses. It requires upgrading to make it transportable by pipeline and usable by conventional refineries. The upgraded bitumen product consists of naphtha, light and heavy gas oils that are combined to produce a light, sweet crude oil that we call Syncrude Sweet Blend.

Water makes up about 4% of the oil sand by weight. It surrounds each grain of sand, keeping it separate from the oil. Without this water envelope, the oil and the sand could not be separated by the water-based extraction methods we now use.

According to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, Alberta's oil sand deposits contain approximately 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen, of which over 175 billion are recoverable with current technology, and 315 billion barrels are utimately recoverable with technological advances. The Athasbasca Oil Sands Deposit is, by itself, the largest petroleum resource in the world.

Oil sand is visible on the banks of the Athabasca River, north and south of Fort McMurray, but most of the oil sand in the area lies buried 50 metres or deeper under muskeg and overburden.

The origin of the oil is a controversial subject among geologists, but the predominant theory is that it evolved in highly organic Cretaceous shales in the southern portion of the Alberta Sedimentary Basin. Underground pressure forced the oil to soak into the existing silt grade sediments and localized sand bodies of the McMurray formation.