MONTREAL – Canadian Industry Minister Tony Clement agreed to acquire $ 1, 7 billion by PetroChina for two projects Athabasca Oil Sands Corporation in the northeast province of Alberta, Canada.
Of the deal, PetroChina International are in control of 60 percent over MacKay and Athabasca’s oil sands deposits Dover.

“I am satisfied that this investment be one of the net profits for Canada,” Clement said in a statement, as quoted by AFP on Wednesday (30/12/2009).

Clement added that China is committed to the company contributed more than USD250 million to cover development projects of oil sands for the next three years, and to increase employment and regional managing offices in the area for a period of five years.

For information, according to the Athabasca oil sands of Dover is deposited MacKay is projected to produce five million barrels of oil per day.

On October 31, the agreement made between the Athabasca and PetroChina namely the agreement to invest in Canadian oil sands that have been achieved after the introduction of a global economic recession at the end of 2008.

As is known, the oil sands located in the western part of Canada is the second largest oil reserves in Canada after Saudi Arabia and produce approximately 175 billion barrels. However, these oil reserves has long ignored the country because of the high extraction costs, except by local companies.

Since 2000, crude oil prices soaring and increase recorded extraction methods that led to the exploitation of oil reserves is becoming more economical.

This inevitably has attracted several multinational oil companies to mine the sand, but still use the cycle of foreign investment. Until now, the United States (U.S.) is still the largest consumer of oil sands bitumen.