Offerings flood Canadian asset market

Gary Park, Petroleum News Calgary correspondent

The buyers of recent years have turned into sellers, swamping the Canadian mergers and acquisitions market with assets and companies, according to Calgary-based Sayer Securities, which tracks the M&A scene.

It put a value on first-quarter offerings of C$2.8 billion, compared with the quarterly average in 2001 and 2002 of C$1.1 billion, and estimated they represented combined production of 102,715 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Sayer credited the surge to companies who are rationalizing their portfolios after joining the earlier buying spree, combined with high selling prices over the 2002-03 winter and the fact that some U.S. companies can now make sales after complying with U.S. securities and accounting rules.

Topping the list of vendors were U.S.-based Marathon Canada, National Fuel Exploration and Vintage Petroleum Canada, which represented 41 percent of the total production on the block. Marathon led the way with 27,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.