The French being the French?I haven't posted anything on this board for a few months, but something caught my eye & peeked my interest, so i just had to say something. As you all know by now, Teck has thrown in the towel and has pretty much divested all of its interest in Fort Hills project. Last yeat Suncor picked up part of that divestiture from Teck, but not all of it. There was also some debte & speculation on who would pick up the last remaining interest from Teck on that project. Some favored Suncor gobbling it all up and others like me saying it could be only be two possible choices. If it's not Suncor, there's only Cenvous who would.....could.
And here we now are. It didn't turn out exactly how most of us expected. Right LOL? And there's really something bothering me here. What's Total's angle here, what are they up to? Because what they're doing, or have done in this case, doesn't quite add up. For those that don't know, Total is the French O&G multinational. They've had quite a presence in the Canaidan oil patch over the last two decades, specfically the Oil Sands projects. But they weren't the only ones, along with the several other European giants & important investors was also the massive American interests & Chinese presence. That's all gone now, well most of it anyway, for several reasons. Some out of the hands or control of Canadians & some by self inflicted wounds.
But coming back to Total's motives and not to go off in a tangent, what's their end game here? They've been saying for sometime they wanted to totally divest of their Canadian O&G intrests, especially the heavy oil/Oil sands and were looking for a buyer. Now granted, they did say the process would take some time, trying to find a suitble buyer AND that they preferred to go the way of a spinoff/sale rather than giving up their interests directly, like Teck has done. So why in the H did they all of a sudden pick up Teck's remaining interest and more or less C blocked Sucor from grabbing the rest? Out of anger or frustration? Out of spite? Or is this the Fench being the French where arrogance just comes with the package?
What i'm trying to get at here, is the following. I'm not quite sure what Total's end game is and what they're actually trying to achieve besides just pi$$ing off Suncor and making SU's current problems that much greater. I mean even if Total go the route of spinning off their Oil sands invesment into a different, stand alone company, hoping a moivated buyer would come in and merge with the newly formed company, who do they think would be the eventual (AND SOLE!) buyers lol? Taking a famous line from an obscure but cult film, "there could only be one!". Or in this case maybe two possible buyers. And i'll let you wager a guess who those two are. Most will get Suncor and the OTHER is no other than Cenovus herself. There are NO OTHERS, NONE. So what's Total trying to accomplish here? Set up a potential bidding war between two mutual & friendly entities so they can profit from it? LOL, i don't the Canadian ceo's of each respective company are that gullible or dumb to fall for that trick.
But let's just see how this plays itself out........i just need to get more popcorn though
GLTA