India, which has mounted a high-profile hunt for foreign reserves to help power its growing economy, is not worried its plans will put it head-to-head with longtime rival China in bidding for Canadian oil sands assets, said M.S. Srinivasan, secretary of India's Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas. "There are countries where opportunities are extremely limited, the window of opportunity is limited. There, some competition is unavoidable," Srinivasan told Reuters. "But when opportunities are presenting themselves on a much larger scale, then there's room for everyone. I don't think there's going to be unhealthy competition." Chinese firms have been enthusiastic investors in northeastern Alberta's vast oil sands resources over the past year, taking stakes in a handful of development projects and a pipeline proposal. As many as four Indian companies are looking to invest in in the region, with an eye to early-stage developments, said Srinivasan, who was heading an Indian delegation on a visit to Calgary, Canada's energy capital. Such Indian firms as Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd. have been bidders in auctions for big foreign reserves. There are no specific projects on the radar yet, he said. "The thing is it requires a lot of homework from our side -- looking at the areas, looking at the options available, looking at the prospectivity and looking at the technologies," he said. Another big consideration is the ability to get the crude wrung from the oil sands to refineries, he said. Alberta's oil sands are already the target of an estimated $100 billion of investments in new projects and expansions of those that are already producing. Current output is more than one million barrels a day, or about 40 percent of total Canadian crude production. The resources rival Saudi Arabia's conventional oil reserves in size, but are far more expensive to develop and refine into petroleum products like gasoline. With surging oil prices and tight energy supplies making headlines in the United States, oil sands have over the past year taken center stage amid the quest for secure reserves. Oil sands are either mined in open pits, as is done at projects run by Syncrude Canada Ltd., Suncor Energy Inc. and Shell Canada, or produced by thermal means. That involves injecting steam into the ground to loosen the gooey crude so it can be pumped to the surface in wells. India is too late to the party to acquire major mining holdings, said Wilf Gobert, analyst with Peters & Co. Ltd. "But 80 percent of oil sands are thermal 'in situ' projects, and there is lots and lots of acreage and thermal oil sands prospects around," Gobert said. EnCana Corp., for example, announced it is looking for partners to help develop its vast thermal prospects, and said foreign state oil firms had already expressed interest. Besides recent interest among Chinese firms, the region has attracted French oil major Total SA, which acquired a controlling stake in the $9 billion Joslyn development last year. Canada's industry estimates production of tar-like bitumen and synthetic crude processed from the unconventional resources will nearly triple to 2.7 million barrels a day by 2015, as a host of projects start up. PIN/REUTERS