Who Owns Alberta's Tar Sands?

In theory, the tar sands, as a Canadian natural resource, are owned by the people of Alberta. Their government has the right under the Constitution to give it away. That is what they are doing, of course. Information on shareholders reveals that 71% of all the profits resulting from the tar sands operations goes to foreigners.

Nikki Skuce of Forest Ethics Advocacy has used Bloomberg Professional and data from Oilsands Review to calculate the extent of foreign ownership and control of the major corporations involved in the extraction and processing of the bitumen which is processed into usable oil products. The results are below:

Foreign Owned Oilsands Corporations: percent foreign ownership

Statoil, 99.8%
Mocal Energy (JX Holdings), 99.3%
Murphy Oil, 99.2%
Royal Dutch Shell, 98.5%
Devon Energy, 98.4%
ConocoPhillips, 97.8%
Petrobank Energy Resources, 94.8%
Husky Energy, 90.9%
MEG energy, 89.1%
Imperial Oil, 88.9%

Canadian Oilsands Corporations : percent foreign ownership

Nexen, 69.9%
Canadian Natural Resources Limited, 58.8%
Suncor energy, 56.8%
Canadian Oil Sands, 56.8%
Cenovus, 54.7%

SOURCE:  Nikki Skuce. Forest Ethics Advocacy