Last night I read Alberta Oil's Special Feature, which was an interview with Peter Lougheed, Alberta's Premier from 1971 to 1985. It was an excellent article, with of course much pertinence to Connacher's operations. I also enjoyed the discussion about the struggle of resource ownership between the Province and Federal Government. There were two items I found to be particularly relevant to Connacher:

1. A question was raised about linking the licensing of oilsands projects with the condition that bitumen be upgraded within the province. (Ex-) Premier Lougheed "...looking down the road, what I would hope is that we would not give licenses for oilsands development that were just in the mining side, but [would give licenses] that required an upgrader." This would seem to be a concern going forward to MRCI upgrade considerations.

2. I've seen comments on other boards hoping for someone such as China to come in and make a buyout offer of CLL. Personally I hope that doesn't happen for various reasons. (Ex-) Premier Lougheed strongly believes the Province of Alberta owns its resources (I'm not sure I agree with him that this is the fair position). Interestingly and not-surprisingly with his beliefs, he stated "...to say to the Chinese people ... we don't believe that there should be a majority ownership of any oilsands lease by a foreign government-controlled entity." He speaks further about this, and notes that he's in the minority ... I wonder about differentiation between government-controlled entities and foreign-owned corporations. So any buyout offer may not be as straight-forward as it might appear.