Sunoco set up the original endowment for the Pew Foundation, now called the Pew Charitable Trusts. They also began the corporation now known as Suncor.
Sunoco currently refines bitumen in Ohio and are planning to do so soon in their home turf of Philadelphia.
Sunoco has, through either Pew family members (J Howard Pew's heirs, J Howard started Sun Oil/Sunoco) or current board members and CEO's of Sunoco, a majority of the board of trustees of the Pew Charitable Trusts to this very day.
The Pew Charitable Trusts also gives sustaining funding to the most reactionary right wing think tanks in the US-- such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute (who count men such as Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, John Bolton and Douglas Feith among their members).
This foundation also tries to buy up the resistance in smaller communities who are desperate for funding. Then the strategies undertaken do not even call for a moratorium when it comes to the tar sands.
They bank roll the Canadian Boreal Initiative in particular. The CBI is in direct partnership with both Suncor and Nexen (Nexen is a member of the Syncrude consortium and runs the largest and dirtiest of the SagD plants in operation).
Sunoco now wants more refining capacity right when the market is weakest. This is a standard plan for the major players in energy. When the market is weak, make a play for outright monopolization. It's happened before-- what is different is that now the corporation making this play has a direct role in blunting real resistance.
Enough of this corporate scam to destroy resistance! Shut down the tar sands! Show the CBI the door!
Sunoco seeks oil sands partner
NORVAL SCOTT
Globe and Mail December 15, 2008
CALGARY — Canada's oil sands producers have a potential new partner, as Sunoco Inc. has said it wants more Albertan supply for its U.S. refineries.
Sunoco chief executive Lynn Elsenhans told an analyst meeting Monday that the Philadelphia-based company is seeking a partner to invest in retooling its 180,000 barrels a day Toledo, Ohio refinery to take more bitumen.
After the Toledo refinery work is complete, Sunoco would also like to find a partner to invest in improvements at its three refineries on the U.S. East Coast, Ms. Elsenhans added. She didn't give a timeline for the potential projects or name which companies Sunoco would be interested in partnering with.
A deal with Sunoco could be attractive for oil sands producers keen to find a refining home for their output. The market for Alberta's bitumen is limited not only by pipeline capacity, but also by the nature of bitumen itself; the heavy, sticky crude is difficult to transport and refine, and can only be processed by advanced refineries.
Producers can broaden their market by processing their bitumen in upgraders – vast facilities that remove the heavier crude components and create a lighter, synthetic product. But upgraders can cost up to $12-billion to build, and companies have cancelled or delayed over $40-billion of planned projects in Alberta in recent weeks because of the uncertain financial outlook for such major projects.
A cheaper alternative to building upgraders is to reach a partnership agreement with a U.S. refiner. In 2006, Calgary-based EnCana Corp. struck a deal with ConocoPhillips whereby the Canadian firm took a stake in Conoco's Illinois refinery, in exchange for a share in its oil sands projects. Husky Energy Inc. and BP PLC reached a similar agreement last year.
Companies that have delayed or cancelled upgraders in recent weeks, and so may potentially be interested in a deal with Sunoco, include Petro-Canada, privately-held Value Creation Inc. and Norway's Statoil ASA.
Any entry by Sunoco into the oil sands would be tinged with irony. Sunoco was the original owner of the company that eventually became Suncor Energy Inc., which is now one of Canada's largest oil and gas companies.
Sunoco divested its interest in Suncor in the mid-1990s. In Canada, the brand name Sunoco is still used by Suncor Energy at some of its service stations, which aren't now affiliated to the U.S. company of the same name.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081215.wsunocostaff...
