CNOOC Ltd., one of China’s three leading oil and gas companies and its biggest investor in Canada, is losing patience with the country’s failure to build pipelines for export, Beijing-based advisor Weidong Chen told the Financial Post this week.
“Canada is good on the legal, commercial, political stability, and also technology,” he said. “But it’s slow, the infrastructure [approvals] go slow.”
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“After spending $35 billion in Canada’s energy industry when oil and asset prices were high, Chinese energy companies are reeling from the oil crash and cutting jobs and investment,” the Post reports. “Their inability to export products due to Canada’s slow regulatory approval process has made a bad situation worse.”
After acquiring Nexen Inc. for $15.1 billion in 2009, CNOOC proposed a liquefied natural gas (LNG) project near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, but Chen “is not optimistic it will get off the ground any time soon,” Catteneo writes. “You go to the Pacific [Ocean with a pipeline from Alberta], you have to negotiate with B.C., and B.C. has a lot of First Nations,” he said. “I participated in three (annual LNG) conferences. They continuously talk about First Nations issues. I didn’t see any progress.”
