There was a time in the Canadian oil patch when growth used to be pretty much the only measure of success. Companies aimed to grow production and reserves and everything else was secondary. Through numerous price crashes, infrastructure constraints and shifting investor preferences, those days seem like long ago. Nowadays, companies are tasked with being efficient stewards of capital. Their job is to to carefully weigh capital decisions, balancing growth capital and acquisition considerations, against return of capital choices including share buybacks or dividends.
But capital discipline has not eliminated the need to grow. In an industry where scale drives relevance, access to capital and access to takeaway capacity or LNG exposure, standing still can be just as risky as overspending. Consolidation remains a defining theme in Canadian energy, and companies that fail to grow risk being swallowed up by those that do. “Get busy living or get busy dying”, Tim Robbins’ character Andy Dufresne said in The Shawshank Redemption. Truer words were never spoken as it applies to Canadian energy companies these days.
What follows is a point-in-time look back at the largest percentage change in Canada-only volumes over the last 6 months (June volumes to December volumes) for public companies >10,000 BOE/d only. The production figures are not corporate values but gross licensed production based on public data, an aggregation of all wells licensed to a company before working interest adjustments. In some cases, like InPlay and Vermilion, acquisition has been the primary driver of the added volumes. In others, like Spartan Delta, Kelt and Paramount, organic production growth is evident.
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| Company | Canadian Gross Licenced Production – December (boe/d) | Gross Change in Production – 6 month (%) | Comments |
| InPlay Oil Corp. | 19,069 | 141 | Acquired Cardium assets from Obsidian |
| Vermilion Energy Inc.*** | 92,344 | 92 | Acquired Westbrick Energy |
| Spartan Delta Corp. | 53,782 | 30 | Organic production growth |
| Kelt Exploration Ltd. | 46,746 | 28 | Organic production growth |
| Paramount Resources Ltd. | 38,833 | 23 | Organic production growth |
| ARC Resources Ltd. | 404,457 | 23 | Acquired Montney assets from Strathcona – some curtailed volumes last summer |
| Cenovus Energy Inc. | 841,667 | 17 | Not including MEG acquisition, those licences were transferred in January |
| Cardinal Energy Ltd. | 27,169 | 15 | Organic production growth – Redford startup |
*MEG and NuVista removed from consideration as both companies have been acquired
**Gross licensed production does not equal corporate production. It is an aggregation of all wells licensed to a company on a gross basis before working interest adjustments
***Note volumes shown are Canada only
