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To: bigbuk who wrote (56)	7/5/2001 9:42:59 AM
From: bigbuk	Respond to of 134

EUG .t been buying --one to watch imo...... a long for me? yup Foreign lands lure Canada's energy firms DAVID PARKINSON Thursday, July 5, 2001 CALGARY -- Canada's oil and gas sector looked increasingly beyond Canada's borders for production last year, outstripping production growth within Canada, according to a new report from a Calgary-based energy consultant. Ian Doig, publisher of industry newsletter Doig's Digest, said in his annual Canadian Energy Ventures Abroad report that Canadian oil and gas companies produced 617,000 barrels a day of crude oil in 30 foreign countries in 2000, a jump of 32 per cent from 1999. Their natural gas production outside Canada rose 10 per cent, to 781.1 million cubic feet a day, in a total of 10 countries. At the same time, crude oil production in Canada rose by just 4 per cent, to about 2.2 million b/d, according to industry figures. Natural gas production in this country also rose by about 4 per cent last year, to 17.2 billion cubic feet a day. Ironically, the big increase comes at a time when many observers have expressed concern about the growing presence of foreign-owned companies in Canada's domestic oil and gas market. Several recent high-profile takeovers of Canadian producers by U.S. companies -- including Conoco Inc.'s massive $6.7-billion deal announced in May to buy Gulf Canada Resources Ltd. -- have significantly boosted foreign ownership of Canadian production. Greg Stringham, vice-president of markets and fiscal policy for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said Canada's major oil and gas firms, like their international counterparts, have become big enough that they no longer need to restrict themselves to their own borders for growth opportunities. "Companies are growing to the size where they've had some success here, and now they're looking at becoming global players," he said. Canadian companies' international oil production is up 354 per cent since 1993, the first year of Mr. Doig's annual report. Mr. Doig noted that 15 per cent of Alberta's petroleum work force is now focused on international production projects. Analysts said international exploration and development opportunities are looking more attractive to Canadian producers because new and inexpensive reserves have become increasingly difficult to find in the relatively more mature and competitive Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. "There's a higher risk in some of these places, but there's also a higher degree of return," said Stephen Rodrigues, a statistical analyst for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. The spurt in international production by Canadian companies last year was led by Talisman Energy Inc. of Calgary, a company under considerable heat for its production in Sudan, which critics say helps finance a bloody civil war in the country. Talisman's Greater Nile Oil Project in Sudan's Mugald basin had its first full year of production in 2000. Talisman also boosted its output of oil and natural gas in the U.K. North Sea during the year. Other key contributors to the rise in production were Hurricane Hydrocarbons Ltd.'s Kazakhstan oil operations and Alberta Energy Co.'s purchase of the Jonah natural gas field in Wyoming, the report said. Mr. Doig noted that 10 per cent of the Canadian oil and gas sector's total capital spending was outside of Canada last year.