France-based oil company Total has made a C$617 million ($502 million) bid for all the shares in Toronto-listed oil-sands player UTS Energy Corp., it was announced Wednesday.

The share offer was a staggering 57 more than the company’s stock price on Jan. 27th, 2009.

Total said it was consolidating its oil sands stake for “long-term development potential”. For Canadians, and especially Canadian oil companies, it brings the number of companies transfering ownership to foreign companies to well over 600, according to a recent look at numbers kept by the country’s statistics keepers, Statscan.

UTS’s main asset is a 20 percent stake in the Fort Hills Project in the Athabasca region of oil province Alberta. Former “national energy champion” Petro-Canada operates Fort Hills with a 60-percent stake. Teck Cominco owns the remaining 20 percent.

Fort Hills is said to hold 4 billion barrels of sticky bitumen that requires mining techniques to extract a refinable hydrocarbon.

The project is expected to advance in stages of 160,000 barrels of bitumen each, and the first phase has received the main approvals needed for its launch, Total said.

Costs and timing are being scrutinized ahead of an investment decision on Phase 1 seen coming in 2010. The bitumen could be heated into liquid as early as 2013.

Total is already nearby at the Joslyn and Northern Lights projects with 74-percent and 60-percent stakes. At Joslyn, where Total is operator, a potential 230,000 barrels per day is envisaged.

Meanwhile engineering studies for an upgrader project near Edmonton to process bitumen from various oil sands projects is “continuing as planned”.

Tags: Total, UTS Energy Corp.