Just catching up with the posts after doing some DD and listen to conference calls on my other holdings looking for any "yellow light" flushing.

About Bitumen price:

There are some short term unusual price movement related to the local upgrades or refineries like we had in December effecting the differential. In general Bitumen spot price will be effected (not linearly) by futures OIL prices.

As of yesterday, Feb10 Bitumen dropped below $26/bbl and most likely today will drop below $25 which will put POD1 to negative operational cash flow.

This is on the daily bases and you have to look on the big picture. I use in my estimates Monthly Weighted Averages.

To clarified some posts: POD1 2500/bbl bitumen production is not locked in at $46.

The hedging contract for 2,500 bbl/d per month at $46.00 US is for WTI oil not the Bitumen which is sold by CLL.

As I posted before it is very FUZZY how this can effect the POD1 cash flow or corporation cash flow. Possibly they just collect the differential between the WTI spot price and the $46 hedge through August 2009.

There is a contract on a portion of POD1 bitumen production as per management statement but they do not specified the price.

Booster, IMO POD1 ramping up is just another gamble. DG said in the interview that he will shut down the POD1 again if the oil will drop. Your concern about the cost of this exercise is very legitimate as the CLL has no free cash flow to full around and this add millions of dollars to the cost of Bitumen production.