CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – PetroChina (601857.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is buying its Canadian partner’s stake in a newly approved oil sands project for C$680 million ($674 million), making it the first large-scale development in the region to be wholly owned by a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

Calgary-based Athabasca Oil Sands Corp (ATH.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Tuesday it exercised its option to sell its 40 percent interest in the MacKay River project in northern Alberta so it could free up money to concentrate on some of its other oil sands and light crude projects.

After the project won regulatory approvals last week, the partners had 30 days to decide to exercise put and call options on Athabasca’s stake. They have a similar arrangement with a larger, nearby project still awaiting a go-ahead from regulators.

Athabasca shares rose 39 Canadian cents, or 3 percent, to C$12.88 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning.

“Now you can look forward with a bit more clarity on what they’re going to be up to in the next couple of years as opposed to wondering whether or not they’re staying in the joint venture,” FirstEnergy Capital Corp analysts Michael Dunn said.

“Whenever you remove uncertainty, it’s usually good for a stock.”

Work is expected to start this month at MacKay River, which is scheduled to begin producing 35,000 barrels a day by 2014, at a cost of around C$1.3 billion. Eventual output could hit 150,000 bpd.

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – TransCanada Corp still has a big advantage in the race to supply U.S. oil markets with Canadian supplies, despite a year’s delay to its $7 billion Keystone XL project, because of the preparation already done, Chief Executive Russ Girling said on Thursday.

TransCanada’s customers have shown they believe the controversial pipeline is still the best option for moving burgeoning Canadian oil sands and North Dakota shale oil production by signing up for more capacity and backing an extension of the line in Texas, Girling told Reuters in an interview.

In more than 40 months since proposing the development, the company has completed much of the U.S. regulatory process including an environmental impact statement, acquired 93 percent of the right-of-way between Alberta and Texas, ordered and stockpiled the pipe and other equipment and signed construction contracts, he said.

“That’s a massive amount of work that anybody who wants to build a pipeline to move the supply to market has to do. And every one of those processes is riddled with complexity and, as we know today, even more difficulty than we’ve ever had in the past,” Girling said.

On Thursday, TransCanada said its shippers were looking beyond the delay by backing a 19 percent increase in the pipeline’s capacity to 830,000 barrels a day and a spur line to Houston from the Keystone XL endpoint at Nederland, Texas.

Last month, the U.S. State Department, after studying the project for more than three years, pushed off its decision on whether to approve the pipeline well into 2013, past the U.S. presidential election next November.

Part of the reason was to study moving the proposed route in Nebraska away from an aquifer, and the company and state are currently examining new rights-of-way under an agreement made just days after the State Department’s postponement.