Topic: How To Invest

Your opinion on Canadian Oil Sands? Thank you.

Article Excerpt

Canadian Oil Sands Trust, $19.32, symbol COS.UN on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 481.5 million: Market cap: $9.3 billion), has a 36.74% interest in Syncrude Canada Ltd. Canadian Oil Sands’ share of Syncrude’s current oil production is about 115,800 barrels per day. Syncrude is the largest producing oil-sands project in the world, and Canadian Oil Sands Trust is the biggest stakeholder. Other partners in the Syncrude Canada venture include Imperial Oil (25%); Petro-Canada (12%); Conoco-Phillips Oil Sands Partnership II (9.03%); Nexen Oil Sands Partnership (7.23%); Mocal Energy (5%); and Murphy Oil (5%). Syncrude Canada mines oil sands and operates power-generation plants, bitumen-extraction plants and an upgrading complex that processes bitumen (or a heavy black viscous oil) into regular crude oil, which can be used by refineries to produce gasoline and diesel fuels. Syncrude’s oil-sands project is located 40 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, Alberta; its production is pumped to Edmonton-area refineries, which then send it via pipeline to refineries in Canada and the…