IPC Canada released its Q3 report recently, and the company did highlight some recent M&A transactions that have transformed the company’s asset base. While the Blackrod oil sands project remains a major focus for IPC, these transactions do provide some insight into the company’s other areas of interest.
The Q3 report cites the completion of an acquisition in March 2023, in which IPC Canada acquired Cor4 Oil Corp. The mineral rights transfer for that acquisition are pictured below, in which we can see 168.7 net sections of mineral rights transferred from Cor4 to IPC. In Figure 1 below, the mineral rights transfer is shown in blue, with the existing IPC Canada Crown mineral rights shown in pink.
In the acquisition press release the volumes associated with this transaction were suggested to have a 2023 average of around 4,000 BOE/d. BOE Intel’s well licence transfer tool shows that on June 23, 2023 there were 1,685 licences that were transferred with gross production from those licences at the month of transfer of 5,737 BOE/d (including 4,102 bbl/d of oil). Keep in mind that that production figure is a gross number, and the company may have working interest agreements in those wells.
Figure 1 – Mineral rights transfer from Cor4 to IPC
On the more current side of the M&A ledger, IPC Canada noted that it has disposed of non-core production and land assets in the John Lake and Fishing Lake areas near the AB/SK border. IPC quotes the production involved as around 365 bbl/d of oil in its Q3 report.
Of particular interest here is that the mineral rights transfers suggest there were definitely 2 different buyers, but potentially even 3. While Lycos and Caltex Trilogy show up as acquirors of mineral rights, a third transfer has gone to Millennium Land, a land broker. All 3 transfers are grouped together in Figure 3 below. While there are usually a couple alternative explanations for why mineral rights might get transferred back to a broker, in this case it seems most likely that there may have been a third buyer that wished to remain anonymous. We can see AER transfers for the first two, but not for the third transfer suggesting that it may just be a mineral rights transaction with no associated wells, facilities or pipelines.
While we won’t go through the next step here, BOE Intel users can take this one step further with our activity and asset transfer maps and pretty easily identify who is most likely behind this transfer. It appears to be some former E&P management team members with a relatively new startup.
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Figure 2 – Mineral rights transfers
Figure 3 – Three recent mineral rights transfers from IPC Canada
