June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Canadian oil sand deposits require crude prices of at least $70 a barrel to cover capital and operating expenses and provide an acceptable rate of return, a StatoilHydro ASA executive said.

``You cannot produce at $50 a barrel,'' Robert Skinner, StatoilHydro's senior vice president for commercial and business development in Canada, said in Madrid today. Rising costs mean New York oil prices need to be at least about $70 or $80 a barrel to make Canadian oil sands worthwhile, he said.

Oil sands, biofuels and exploration in harsh, untapped environments such as the Arctic, are among the possibilities for finding the ``third trillion barrels'' of oil resources, Saudi Aramco Chief Petroleum Engineer Khaled Buraik told a round-table panel today at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid.

About a trillion barrels of oil has already been produced and the world has another trillion of proven oil reserves, leaving the question of where the third trillion will be found.

StatoilHydro is Norway's largest oil company.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Voss in Madrid at sev@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 30, 2008 07:36 EDT