Lauren Krugel

Calgary — The very earliest at which crude will begin flowing out of the Fort Hills oilsands project will be late 2015, the chief executive of UTS Energy Corp. said Monday.

“You have to have some patience,” Will Roach told analysts on a conference call Monday to discuss his company's third-quarter results.

“I understand from the shareholder perspective that's not always very attractive. But these oilsands assets are long-term in nature, very high capital intensity and you have to spend the right time to get the right technologies and the right strategy to develop them.”

Suncor Energy Inc. is the operator of Fort Hills with a 60 per cent stake; UTS and Vancouver-based miner Teck Resources Ltd. (TSX:TCK.B) evenly split the rest.

Suncor inherited the Fort Hills interest through its merger with Petro-Canada in August.

On Friday, Suncor chief executive Rick George said moving ahead with Fort Hills would not be a priority in 2010, and expansions to its Firebag project would be first in the queue.

“Obviously it is not in this first leg. It's hard for us to see project economics beating Firebag 3 or 4 for other projects that we have, certainly in the near term,” Mr. George said.

UTS anticipated its partner would make that decision, given that the Firebag is much further along in development than Fort Hills.

“This comes as no surprise and actually we're quite constructively looking at this development,” Mr. Roach said.

“We think it will take about a year to sort out the best way to develop Fort Hills and it shows really that there's quite complicated and large opportunities for synergies with the Suncor infrastructure.”

On a conference call with analysts Friday to go over its spending plans for next year, Mr. George said Suncor would target an average of 10 to 12 per cent annual production growth in the oilsands through to 2020.

Fort Hills will need to come on stream some time in the next decade in order for Suncor to meet that target, Mr. Roach said.

On Friday Mr. George also reaffirmed that Suncor would remain an oilsands-dominated player and that it would sooner consolidate its position than sell off any of its oilsands properties.

Mr. Roach said he found those remarks encouraging.

“That's not to say we expect to be bought,” UTS said, but rather “they're not looking to get rid of the oilsands assets they've got ... And that's the key point at Fort Hills.”

In addition to Fort Hills, UTS also splits ownership of the Frontier and Equinox oilsands properties with Teck.

UTS recently sold its half-interest in the Lease 421 area to Imperial Oil Ltd. and its U.S. parent company ExxonMobil Corp. for $250-million.

Late Friday UTS it lost $4.7-million in the third quarter compared with a loss of $936,000 a year ago.

The loss for the quarter ended Sept. 30 amounted to a penny per share compared with a loss of $936,000 or 0.2 cents per share a year ago.

Revenue totalled $205,000, down from $3-million.

© Canadian Press