OREANDA-NEWS.  March 11, 2013. Sunshine Oilsands Ltd., the first Canadian oil-sands operator to list shares on the Hong Kong exchange, is in “advanced” talks with joint-venture partners to boost production to a potential 1 million barrels a day.

Sunshine, whose shares slumped 47 percent to the lowest close yesterday since its Hong Kong trading debut last February, is in conversations with “more than two and less than 10” investors, Chief Executive Officer John Zahary said in an interview.

The company is betting its ownership structure, which includes several large Chinese investors, along with the Hong Kong listing, will give it access to the capital it needs to develop its 1.2 million acres of leases in Alberta, potentially making it one of the largest oil-sands producers.

“We have the ability to do different things with different people,” Zahary said in a Feb. 26 interview at Sunshine’s Calgary headquarters. “We need capital, they have capital and this creates an opportunity for us.”

Discussions have been with global companies that have expressed interest publicly in getting bigger or entering the oil sands and those that haven’t publicly said anything, Zahary said. The company’s largest Chinese shareholders include China Petrochemical Corp., known as Sinopec, China Investment Corp. and China Life Insurance Overseas Co., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.