Canadian Natural Resources cleared a big regulatory hurdle on January 27, 2026 with a ruling from Canada’s Competition Bureau on its merger review involving certain assets from Tourmaline Oil Corp. The parties received an NAL (No Action Letter) from the Competition Bureau, essentially stating that the Bureau does not intend to challenge the transaction at this time.
This step forward, along with public filing of AER licence transfer applications, puts the company one step closer to formally acquiring Tourmaline’s PRH assets that it officially put up for sale after its Q3 financial report.
The affected locations from the recent AER licence transfer applications can be seen in the StackDX Intel map below in Figure 1. To date, applications have been filed to transfer 1,090 wells, 211 pipelines, and 223 facilities from Tourmaline to CNRL. It is possible that this is not yet the full amount of licence transfers to be made, as they will often be filed in separate applications.
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Figure 1 – StackDX Intel Map of Affected Locations for AER Licence Transfer Applications
Recall that the news first broke on January 14th that CNRL was in talks to buy these assets from Tourmaline.
Shortly thereafter, we dove into the Q3 conference call to get some more detail on why Tourmaline was interested in selling now, and showed the general area involved on the map.