Tourmaline Oil Corp. is buying two private natural-gas producers for $526-million as the company makes good on its strategy of snapping up assets in gas-rich regions as rivals struggle.
Tourmaline said it is acquiring Jupiter Resources Inc. for $426-million, consisting of 24.2 million of its common shares. It will also assume $200-million in Jupiter debt. The target company produces about 67,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day in the North Deep Basin region in northwest Alberta.
Calgary-based Tourmaline is also buying Modern Resources Inc. for $100-million, consisting of $73.8-million in cash and 1.5 million Tourmaline shares. It will also assume $44-million of debt.
Modern, backed by private-equity firms ARC Financial and EnCap Investments, produces 9,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day on its Deep Basin lands that are adjacent to Jupiter’s.
Tourmaline chief executive officer Mike Rose has said the current environment, in which many companies are still struggling after the spring’s energy-market collapse, has yielded big opportunities to snap up assets in its main operating regions. Those are the Deep Basin and Montney in Alberta and British Columbia.
The acquisitions will boost Tourmaline’s 2021 production target by 25 per cent to 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, the company said. It also predicted cash flow of $2-billion for next year.
Tourmaline also said it will sell gross overriding royalty interests tied to the lands it is buying to its newly public spinoff, Topaz Energy Corp., for $130-million. Topaz garnered $218-million in proceeds in its initial public offering last month.
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Jeffrey Jones