Fire cuts Suncor’s oil-sands output

Article Excerpt

SUNCOR ENERGY INC. $38 (Toronto symbol SU; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Resources sector; Shares outstanding: 1.6 billion; Market cap: $60.8 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 2.2; Dividend yield: 1.1%; SI Rating: Average) saw its oil-sands properties’ average daily production fall to 219,000 barrels in December 2009. That’s down 30.3% from 314,000 barrels in the previous month. The drop was caused by a fire at an upgrader, which converts the tar-like bitumen into refinery-ready crude. The outage has forced Suncor to cut daily production at its main oil-sands project north of Fort MacMurray, Alberta. However, the lower output should have little impact on the company’s cash flow. Suncor expects to complete repairs by the end of January 2010. Suncor Energy is a buy. buy…