Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell said it plans to quintuple tar sands production. The company announced it will significantly increase its oil production in the controversial Canadian tar sands in an attempt to stop falling production, the Independent reported. At its annual strategy briefing, Europe's largest oil company said its net reserves stayed at 11.9 billion barrels last year only because new discoveries offset the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan forcing the company to give them larger stakes in the Sakhalin 2 and Kashagan projects. Otherwise production would have dropped. The company said it would push further into tar sands in Canada, where it and its partners, Chevron and Marathon Oil, have acquired mining rights to 125,000 hectares of land in Alberta. All three companies currently produce 155,000 barrels per day from the Athabasca oil sands. They have approval to produce 470,000 barrels and have applied for licenses to produce another 300,000 per day. The company refused, however, to give an exploration forecast for the next two years amid continued safety concerns in Nigeria and the early stage of several major projects being funded at $25 billion. “We are not giving any guidance between now and 2010 because there are a lot of moving parts, especially in Nigeria,” said Malcolm Brinded, the head of exploration and production. Oil prices are down after the government reported that the nation's inventories of crude oil, gasoline and heating oil were smaller than expected last week. Light, sweet crude for April delivery is down $2.86 (¤1.82) at $106.56 (¤67.91) a barrel. __
