Shell Canada Ltd

Henry Kim Wong, the Canadian volleyball player who has made a dramatic recovery since being poisoned by carbon monoxide in a San Diego hotel last week, will fly home to Calgary on Friday, a spokesman for the 20-year-old athlete's college said. Guy McLaughlin of Southern Alberta Institute of Technology said in a statement that Wong, his father, a nurse and an interpreter will be flown from Lindbergh Field on a private plane provided by Shell Canada Ltd.

The race to build a natural gas pipeline to California heated up Friday when Southern California Gas Co. announced an agreement to buy gas from the Altamont pipeline project, which would bring gas from Canada to Wyoming. At the same time, the Kern River Gas Transmission Co., which is proposing its own pipeline from Wyoming to California, said it had agreed to transport Altamont's gas on the final leg of its journey south.

Marathon Oil Corp. is poised to break into Canada's growing oil-sands market, announcing Tuesday that it has agreed to buy Western Oil Sands Inc. for $5.5 billion in cash and stock. Shareholders of Western Oil, based in Calgary, Canada, will get $3.6 billion in cash and $1.9 billion in Marathon stock. Marathon also will assume $650 million in Western Oil debt, valuing the total deal at about $6.2 billion.

EDMONTON, Canada - With a daughter to feed, no job and $200 in the bank, Detroit pipe fitter Scott Zarembski boarded a plane on a one-way ticket to this industrial capital city. He'd heard there was work in western Canada. Turns out he'd heard right. Within days he was wearing a hard hat at a Shell oil refinery 15 miles away in Fort Saskatchewan. Within six months he had earned almost $50,000. That was 2009. And he's still there. "If you want to work, you can work," said Zarembski, 45. "And it's just getting started.

Ten days after fumes from a hotel's faulty gas heater sent him into a deep coma, Henry Wong was wheeled out of the hospital Friday into bright sunlight, taking time to answer questions for the media before being whisked away by ambulance to the airport and flown home to Canada. "I feel really good," said the 20-year-old volleyball player, sitting up in a gurney, his hands folded calmly across his lap.

Question: I'm an Olympic pin collector and would like to know the dates of next winter's Olympic Games and, particularly, the advertisers, so I can make plans to try for certain pins.--G.N. Answer: You might want to get the Bill Nelson Newsletter (monthly, $1 a copy, P.O. Box 41630, Tucson, Ariz. 85717), because he keeps careful track of such things. Nelson said the May issue is free to anyone who will write him. The winter games are Feb. 13-28.

To boost awareness that San Diego County lacks any proven natural gas, oil, hydro or coal reserves, San Diego Gas & Electric Chairman Tom Page constantly reminds company shareholders and ratepayers that San Diego County sits in the midst of an "energy desert." Consequently, SDG&E always has looked elsewhere for the natural gas that it burns to generate electricity.

INUVIK, Northwest Territories--Brian Desjardins headed up to Canada's western Arctic in 1999 to escape the pressure and hassle of urban life down south. It hasn't quite worked out that way. Instead of hunting caribou across the frozen tundra, the tourism and fund-raising coordinator for the town of Inuvik finds himself planning conferences and dealing with newcomers lured by the region's latest energy boom.