CONKLIN, Alberta, Nov 3 (Reuters) – Norway’s energy minister said on Thursday he is impressed by the oil sands industry’s moves to clean up operations, but stopped short of pledging unqualified support for investments in the resource by the country’s government-owned oil company.

Ola Borten Moe, minister of petroleum and energy, said after meetings and an energy facilities tour in Canada that the world’s reliance on unconventional energy sources such as shale gas and the Alberta oil sands will only increase and that technological advances are being made.

“They seem to improve their results, in both efficiency and emissions, quite fast,” Borten Moe told reporters at Statoil ASA’s (STL.OL: Quote, Profile, Research) Leismer oil sands operation in northern Alberta. “It will be very interesting to follow this development in the future. It’s been two good days and I have a good impression of what’s happening here.”

Statoil, 65 percent owned by the Norwegian government, has been the target of criticism by environmental groups in Norway for its oil sands holdings, which are steam-driven production operations rather that open-pit mining. The developments are more carbon-intensive than conventional crude extraction, as they require more energy to extract the oil.

The company has said it aims to reduce its energy use more than 40 percent by 2025, by cutting the amount of steam it pumps into the ground to loosen up the tar-like bitumen before pumping it to the surface. The current amount is 2.4 barrels of steam for every barrel of oil produced.

However, Borten Moe — a onetime staunch oil sands critic – declined to say if he supports Statoil’s plan to increase investments. It aims to increase production to 60,000 barrels a day from the current capacity of nearly 19,000 by 2016.

“It’s in line with their mandate. It’s a partly owned Norwegian company, a global energy company, and if they are going to invest more or not it is really up to the board,” he said.

CALGARY/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The decision on the controversial Canada-to-Texas Keystone pipeline could slip into next year, a State Department official acknowledged on Wednesday, a day after President Barack Obama said for the first time that the final decision rests with him.

TransCanada’s $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline is at the center of a political firestorm with green groups and some landowners along the pipe’s route mounting formidable opposition to the project aimed at transporting Canadian oil sands crude to the U.S. Gulf coast.

The State Department has said it would decide by the end of year whether it would approve the pipeline, which falls under its jurisdiction because it crosses the U.S.-Canada border.

But on Tuesday, Obama told a Nebraska television station the department would provide recommendations on the project “in the next several months” and he would decide the fate of the pipeline based on health and economic factors.

A State Department spokeswoman on Wednesday acknowledged evaluation of the proposal might continue into the new year.

“We’d like to get it done by the end of the year, but if thoroughness demands a little more time nobody has slammed the door on that,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news briefing.

Further delay could roil oil markets. Traders are counting on Keystone’s 700,000 barrel-per-day capacity to relieve a build-up of crude in the U.S. Midwest, which doesn’t have enough pipelines to ship growing Canadian output to Gulf Coast refineries for use around the United States.

CALGARY, Alberta, Nov 2 (Reuters) – Talisman Energy Inc will look to further cut exposure to North Sea operations after a year of production setbacks forced the company to twice lower output forecasts, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

CEO John Manzoni told investors that Talisman is weighing a series of options, including joint ventures and drill-to-earn-interest arrangements, as a way to keep extracting short-term cash from North Sea operations to fund other business, but cut longer-term spending.

After Talisman reported its third-quarter profit rose by 48 percent, Manzoni said North Sea operational problems have overshadowed positive results in other parts of the company’s portfolio, such as shale gas holdings in Canada and the United States, and that has depressed its stock price.

“There’s been this huge reaction. It’s been a very difficult thing to deal with, and it’s all because for the first year in a number of years the North Sea actually surprised us again,” he said told analysts.

When Manzoni became Talisman’s CEO in late 2007, he made meeting targets a top priority and later reduced the North Sea operations to the point where they would play the role of cash generator for the rest of the company.

This year, a delay in assembling the platform for the Yme field in the Norwegian sector was a big factor behind the reduced production target, to 425,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from an initial outlook of 450,000-470,000.

Some analysts had wondered if Talisman could be returning to its previous record of missing its own forecasts.

CALGARY, Alberta, Nov 2 (Reuters) – TransCanada Corp said on Wednesday it still expects a U.S. State Department ruling on its $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline plan by the end of the year, despite comments by President Barack Obama suggesting a delay of several months.

Obama’s remarks on Tuesday were the latest from U.S. officials over the past week suggesting that the approval of the controversial pipeline from Alberta to Texas could be pushed back.

“They’ve outlined to us that they’ll make a decision by year-end, and until we’ve been told otherwise we’ll continue to work toward that direction,” TransCanada spokesman Terry Cunha said.

Obama told a Nebraska television station that he expects the State Department to give him its report “over the next several months”. He will then make a decision based on health and economic factors.

Cunha said TransCanada has been operating under the impression that the State Department’s word, which includes a decision on granting a presidential permit allowing the line to cross the Canada-U.S.border, would be final.

However, Obama said he will be weighing the department’s recommendations.

“It does sound like that from what I’ve read, but again, we haven’t been told otherwise,” Cunha said.