Canada NEWS

Canada’s Husky Energy and government agencies began underwater surveying on Monday, following an oil leak in the waters of Newfoundland & Labrador which forced shut down of all crude production in the region. Approximately 1,572 barrels of oil spill through a leaking flowline was detected from Husky’s White Rose Field to the SeaRose storage vessel on Friday. Canada-Newfoundland & Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board will decide when operations can resume.

Canada’s Encana Corp has entered into a buyout agreement to acquire U.S. shale producer, Newfield Exploration. The $5.5 billion acquisition is a total reversal on Encana’s years of narrowing its oil and gas holdings. The Canadian oil and gas firm will gain stakes in the STACK and SCOOP shale fields in Oklahoma, the Uinta play in Utah and the Bakken region of North Dakota.

CEO of Suncor Energy Inc announced that unlike its rivals, Suncor will not reduce its crude output to deal with low prices. This is because Suncor Energy is isolated from the rising price discounts that are applied to Canadian oil by US refineries. He said, “The higher-cost producers are having to pull back because they're not making any margin on their last barrel. We're not in that circumstance.”

Canada’s Husky Energy has reported big profit in its Q3 report which was majorly due to the increased crude prices. The net income of the company climbed to C$545 million ($418.27 million) in this quarter. Though the income of the company increased significantly, but the production reduced to 297 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. Earlier the production of Husky was 318 million boe/d.

Earlier this month, Husky Energy Inc. made a formal offer to buy each MEG share for C$11 in cash. Canada’s MEG has rejected its rival’s offer by considering it as an undervalued proposal. MEG issued a statement saying, “The board ... has unanimously determined that the Husky offer significantly undervalues the common shares and is not in the best interests of MEG or MEG shareholders,”

Canadian oil firm, Irving Oil has reported a major incident at its Saint John refinery in Canada. Residents in the area witnessed fire and explosion at the refinery. According to CNBC, the Saint John refinery has the capacity to refine 320,000 barrels per day of gasoline, diesel heating oil, jet fuel and other petroleum products. More than half of Irving Oil’s produce is supplied to the United States.

Texas-based engineering firm, Fluor Corporation has secured LNG Canada’s $14-billion EPFC contract in a joint venture with JGC Corporation. The JV will deliver engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction on the LNG Canada project. Fluor will receive $8.4-billion share from the contract. LNG Canada is a JV between Shell, PETRONAS, PetroChina, Mitsubishi Corporation and KOGAS.

Husky Energy announced that it has made an offer of acquisition of MEG Energy through an unsolicited bid. The deal is worth C$6.4 billion. The company also informed that the combined production would increase to over 410,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and the refining and upgrading capacity will increase to 400,000 bpd. This acquisition has come at a time when Canadian oil producers are struggling with transportation problems.

The LNG venture of Royal Dutch Shell in Canada is a step closer to a final approval after two of its partners approved their investment share. PetroChina confirmed its $3.46 billion share of the project and Korea Gas Corp did the same. The rest of the partners, Petroliam Nasional of Malaysia and Mitsubishi Corp. of Japan are required to do the same in order to approve final investment decision.

Cenovus Energy, has signed a three year deal to transport heavy crude by rail to the US Gulf Coast. The agreement is to transport over 100,000 bpd of crude. The Canadian National Railway Co. will start transportation from the fourth quarter and Canadian Pacific Railway will take over the shipping part from the second quarter of next year. Recently, the pipeline holdup has negatively affected the oil prices in Canada.

Calgary-based Canadian Natural Resources Ltd completed the acquisition of Laricina Energy Ltd., confirming acceptance from holders of 98.7% Laricina’s issued and outstanding shares. CNRL will pay C$46.35 million for the shares by Sept. 18. Laricina holds two steam-run gravity drainage projects in the West Athabasca region of Alberta, Germain and Saleski. Both the projects put off operations right in the early development stages in 2015.

At an enterprise valuation of $2 billion, investment firm Brookfield is all set to acquire the East West Pipeline Ltd (EWPL), currently running at a loss. Post-acquisition, Brookfield will own the 1,400 km common carrier pipeline from Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh to Bharuch in Gujarat. Brookfield is supporting India Infrastructure Trust, an infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) as the acquisition vehicle.

British E&P major, EnQuest Plc concluded first ship-to-ship transfer at the Shetland’s Sullom Voe terminal. EnQuest transferred 500,000 barrels of crude oil with the help of the Canadian-registered shuttle tanker, The Heather Knutsen. Environmental groups in other parts of Scotland have been against the practice of ship-to-ship transfers over crude oil over potential oil spill in the sea.

Kick starting an investment driven oil-sands project, Fort Hills, Suncor Energy’s oil-sands mine had its formal opening on Monday. Clearing dense forest and dumping oily soils in giant trucks and processing it into heavy crude for U.S. refineries has made industry people hopeful. According to analysts, an era of big projects in the freezing wilderness of Canada will see a new dawn through minimized carbon emissions, combined with lower costs.

Canadian synthetic crude prices dropped on Thursday to the biggest discount to WTI futures since December 2013. An announcement from Suncor Energy about concluding repairs on the Syncrude Canada upgrader, which was shut after a power disruption in June, sent oil prices downhill. The production surge in Suncor’s new Fort Hills oil sands mine also contributed to the fall.

CEO of Suncor Energy Inc. has denied any further pipeline expansions in Canada “until it becomes clearer when new pipelines will be ready”. Suncor took this decision after the Canadian court upended the government’s consent of expansion of Trans Mountain pipeline. In Canada, the new pipelines construction has failed to match the rate of heavy oil production which is now disrupting the supply and creating pricing issues for the country.

The oil major of France, Total, along with its partners, has decided to sell its Alberta’s Joslyn oil sands project. The oil sands project will be sold to Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) in Canadian $225 million. Total had 38.25% stake in Joslyn project. CEO of Total said that this move will lower their exposure to Canada’s oil sands but their strategy now is to focus on low breakeven resources.

Alberta will be implementing a new automated system, known as Integrated Decision Approach (IDA) which will be fully operational by 2021. It will help the companies to submit only one application to cover the life of a project while earlier, separate applications were used for different project activities. It is operated by Alberta Energy Regulator and the companies of Alberta have saved $107 million so far, informed the government.