Canada oil firms again eyeing at Asia market: CAPP

NEW YORK (Reuters) - North American pipeline infrastructure should be sufficient to handle growing Canadian oil production through 2012, but producers are starting to look seriously at Asian markets for the future, the head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) said on Tuesday.

"We are confident there is enough (pipeline) capacity coming online through 2012," Pierre Alvarez said at the Reuters Global Energy Summit.

"In the short term, it is going to be pipe ... (but) people are having a serious look at what is the best option and what are the ones most able to attract investment capital."

Canadian oil production, which is concentrated in the landlocked western province of Alberta, is expected to grow by up to 1 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2020 to 3.8 million bpd, according to CAPP estimates.

Canadian firms have captured a large chunk of inland U.S. oil markets but producers are anxious to access new markets on the U.S. Gulf Coast and elsewhere to avoid creating a glut

Canadian pipeline group Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) announced in February it had received enough interest from producers to relaunch its $4 billion Gateway pipeline project that would connect Alberta's booming oil sands region with a port on Canada's Pacific Coast. Generally, oil pipelines are funded with about 70 percent debt.

Growing interest from refiners on the U.S. West Coast, as well as, in Singapore and Malaysia is helping to support the project, which had originally been focused on meeting Chinese oil demand, Alvarez said.

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Reporting by Robert Campbell, editing by Leslie Gevirtz)