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Buyers aplenty for oil sands assets
Gary Park For Petroleum News
Talisman Energy has completed a large part of its planned exit from the oil sands, but an extensive list of leases is still up for grabs.
As expected, Canadian Oil Sands Trust landed Talisman’s 1.25 percent stake in the Syncrude Canada consortium for C$475 million, while Suncor Energy hooked Talisman’s 2 percent gross overriding royalty on Suncor’s Lease 23 near its Steepbank mine for C$107.5 million.
The Syncrude deal consisted of C$237.5 million in cash and 8.19 million units of COST, raising its dominant stake in Syncrude to 36.74 percent from 35.49 percent.
Talisman’s share of production was rated at 4,375 barrels per day, although it has averaged only 3,400 bpd this year.
In placing its Athabasca assets on the block to clear the way for a concentrated push on its new natural gas play in the Foothills region of Alberta, Talisman attracted interest from more than 50 companies.
It hopes to have other sales concluded by the end of 2006, collecting about C$800 million in additional proceeds. They involve a 100 percent working interest in Lease 10, a 6,800 acre lease immediately south of Suncor’s Steepbank mine and a 75 percent working interest in Lease 50 covering 21,800 acres north of the OPTI Canada-Nexen joint venture at Long Lake.
Koch, Petro-Canada also seeking buyers Koch Exploration and Petro-Canada are also seeking buyers for major leases.
Koch is offering 374,000 net acres in the Athabasca region consisting of an estimated 23 billion barrels of McMurray, Wabiskaw and Grand Rapid resource potential and 24 billion barrels of resource potential in the Nisku/Grosmont carbonates. The offerings, which could be up to C$500 million, are divided into four packages.
Petro-Canada is selling various interests in five in-situ properties — Chard, Stony Mountain, Liege, Thornbury and Ipiatik — estimated to contain 1.7 billion barrels of bitumen resource and likely to fetch as much as C$850 million.
Industry observers are counting on strong international interest in the assets, especially from Korean interests after Korea National Oil Corp. bought leases from Newmont Mining in July, but Norway’s Statoil, Norsk Hydro, Japan Canada Oil Sands and state-controlled Chinese companies could emerge as well.
Other possible contenders include Nexen-OPTI, EnCana, Devon Canada, North American Oil Sands, MEG Energy (which has China National Offshore Oil Corp. as a 16.69 percent partner in a project) and Connacher Oil and Gas.
Athabasca project partners Chevron and Western Oil Sands are also viewed as active acquisitors. The hunger for oil sands property shows no signs of diminishing at Alberta government sales, with bidders paying C$78.2 million Nov. 29 for oil sands parcels.
Scott Land & Lease, acting for an unidentified client, paid C$37 million for rights to 27,800 acres, while Saskatoon Assets paid C$28 million for a connecting parcel.
The parcels are northwest and northeast of the Firebag West and Muskeg area interests held by Value Creation and Shell Canada.
Shell combined with RSX Energy to bid C$1.19 million for 1,265 acres in the same area where it paid C$6.2 million for 2,530 acres in July.
So far this year, oil sands rights have claimed more than half the C$3.29 billion the government has collected at its bi-monthly auctions.
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