The Gringo's last stand......Well, with Chevron fleeing the faltering Canadian O&G space, one of the last remaining American interests in this sector, it continues a disturbing & deadly trend that's been ongoing for at least a decade now, as foreign companies, investors & massive amounts of money leave the canaidan oil patch in droves!
So with Chevron putting up their Duvernay assets up for sale, this would leave only ConocoP & Exxon's Canadian arm remaining........to my knowledge. As far as American interests go. The Europeans are more less gone, as France's Total WAS the last Euro energy entity to do so, by selling their Canadian heavy oil assets last year. So the European are gone, The americans are ALMOST all gone, who's left? The Chinese? Well......
The Chinese which completes this triad of what was once a burgeoning & explosive sector, the BIG 3 who were mainly repsonsible for all the massive amounts of monies that came in, have been totally silent and inactive for some time now. The last Chinese company to do anything of significance in the Canadian oil patch was Mr. Li Kashing & Husky. Of which you all know he eventually sold out years ago. I guess Mr. LI saw the signs on the wall, as did their American counterparts and was smart enough to be one of the first to exit with something.....
So with Chevron taking it's cue and leaving for greener, BETTER pastures, this leaves ONLY the Canadian led operators themselves and no one else. So in essecne we come FULL circle, and back to where it all began..........without all that valuable inflow of money of ofcourse.........which ofcourse......has some dire financial consequences not only for district of Alberta but the entirety of Canada....and this is inevitable & not debatable. I guess you folks have guys like Mr. Trudope himself & Team Trudope to thank for that, along with every Canadian fool who elected him into office for not one but TWO beautiful terms.........Congrats!
So going back to the Chevron situation, this will be interesting to see how their divestiture will play out. There will definitely be interested buyers, as i beleive Chevron will be looking to unload these assets BEFORE Trump is a shoe in for Potus and the S really hits the fan for the entire Canadian space. It's for this reason i believe that the folks at Chevron will be willing to sell these assets at VERY attrative price points & metrics, which will most likely attract MANY potential buyers! From my understanding, Chevron has about ~50K of boepd form Canadian sources, and they want to get rid of it all.
Since this is mostly oil, i full expect this sale to attract lots of interest from guys with cash like Arc & Canadian UnNatural. One of the reasons of WHY i'm posting my comments on THIS forum and should be relevent for folks here. I know that Arc is probably searching for some assets to acquire, and have been searching for some time, so this "unexpected" announcment by Chevron last week, was like a gift from heaven which fell on their laps. I bet you they were probably considering guys like Birchcliff or some other smaller operator, but this is a superior opportunity without taking on unwanted debt. So guys like Arc are in the forefront & drivers seat to be the favorites to strike a deal with Chevron.
Who else would be interested in Chevron's properties? Well, just about EVERYONE in the Canaidan oil patch that wants to stick around for the long term, grow & survive. But there's a difference in being "interested" and being "capable".....of course lol. As this will be a ONLY cash deal for Chevron, the list of potential buyers will be short.
So who are the ones who can actually make that list by haing the cash or the means to borrow it? Arc of course, along with the usual suspects, the larger entities like Canadian UnNatural, Cenovus & Tourmaline. Some have mentioned others like Paramount or Topaz, but Topaz though capable of doing it isn't into buying actual properties & more royality play than anything elese. as far as Paramount is concerned, imo it is highly unlikely they do in THAT area where Chevron has its assets. Why? Because Paramount JUST sold some major assets in Duvernay not too long ago, so why would they re-buy basically in the same area after divesting away themselves from there? Doesn't add up imo. And it's possible tha Paramount MAY be in the process of either merging with Nuvista or exiting themselves.
Therefore Arc is a STRONG candidate for picking those assets, as is Whitecap. And if Whitecap is too remain on the predatory path of acquisitions, i fully expect for Wcp to give Arc a run for their money to acquire those assets with aggressive bidding on those "attractive" Chevron assets. Both have the means, tools, resources and the will do do it......so this will be exciting. If it's a contest between those two, my bet is on Whitecap, because they have so much more to lose if they fail, being a much smaller player with VERY limited OTHER viable options.
This will be very interesting to see how all this plays out AND WHO eventually gets those Chevron properties! I'be got my popcorn ready.....do you?
GLTA