Debate over the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the oil-and-gas industry has been a big and emotional one and led to new restrictions in the oil sands. But a senior executive at one of China's largest oil companies said future investment in Canada still boils down to one much more basic criterion: Does it make money?

Hou Hongbin, chairman of Sinopec Daylight Energy Ltd. and a vice-president of Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration & Production Corp., said his company would like to keep growing in Canada, but it all depends on whether opportunities stack up well, in commercial terms, against those of the 23 other countries it operates in.

Click to enlarge."Every business unit in the world we are in is run by a dynamic economic evaluation," the Beijing-based executive said Wednesday in Toronto, on the sidelines of the investment symposium organized by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "Year by year, according to that, we rank our projects. We only invest for the commercial-oriented projects — that means the best projects [on which] to spend our investments.

"Of course, if our economic evaluation is good, we would like to expand our business here in the future," he said.