CALGARY (CP) -- Petro-Canada [TSX:PCA; NYSE:PCZ] is looking to sell its stakes in five non-core oilsands properties that are said to contain up to 1.7 billion barrels of heavy oil in northern Alberta.
The company said Thursday it has hired British-based oil and gas consultants Harrison Lovegrove to manage the auction process and will open its books to potential bidders, beginning Monday, so they can look at detailed geological data on the properties.
The proposed sale of the Chard, Stony Mountain, Liege, Thornbury and Ipiatik properties - in which Petro-Canada holds varying minority stakes with other Canadian and foreign companies - will allow the Calgary energy giant to focus on its other oilsands operations, which it plans to develop over the next several years.
''The properties for sale are very attractive oilsands assets, but their development, for us, will be a ways down the road,'' Neil Camarta, Petro-Canada's senior vice-president of oilsands operations, said Thursday.
''Over the next 10 years or so, we'll be focusing all of our efforts on developing Fort Hills and our in-situ properties of MacKay River, Lewis and Meadow Creek.''
Petro-Canada has more than five billion barrels of oilsands bitumen in those three so-called in-sutu - or underground - projects as well as about three billion barrels of total estimated oil from its stake in the Syncrude and Fort Hills joint ventures, which are open pit mining projects.
At Syncrude, Petro-Canada is a minority partner in a project along with the Canadian Oil Sands Trust [TSX:COS.UN], Imperial Oil [TSX:IMO] and others.
The Fort Hills project is 55% owned by Petro-Canada, 30% by UTS Energy Corp. and 15% by mining giant Teck Cominco Ltd. [TSX:TCK.B].
In-situ projects require companies to inject steam deep underground through a pipeline to melt the tarry oilsands deposit and then pump the oil to the surface with another pipeline.
The hiring of a British-based firm, which has operations in London, Houston, Washington, Calgary, Moscow and Perth Australia, suggests that potential bidders could come from Europe, the United States and Asia, where interest in the Northern Alberta oilsands is strong, especially among Chinese companies.
No pricetag was named for the properties, but such a sale could fetch hundreds of millions or perhaps billions of dollars.
Petro-Canada has stakes ranging from about 10% to about a third of the properties it wants to sell, covering about 20,000 hectares in northern Alberta.
At Chard, the company's partners include Nexen Inc. [TSX:NXY; NYSE:NXY], Imperial Oil and Japan Canada Oil Sands.
Petro-Canada, a former Crown corporation, is one of Canada's largest oil and gas companies, operating oilsands, offshore oil and natural gas businesses as well as a refining and marketing network through its Petro-Canada branded gasoline stations.
The proposed sale of the non-core Petro-Canada oilsands properties comes amid soaring costs to develop such mega-projects because of rising prices for steel, machinery and labour in a superheated Alberta energy economy.
Earlier this fall, Talisman Energy [TSX:TLM; NYSE:TLM] put all its oilsands holdings up for sale in a move that could fetch more than C$1 billion as the company moves to focus on core oil and gas operations and pare down unnecessary properties.
On the TSX, Petro-Canada shares rose 46 cents to C$51.17 on a volume of almost 1.3 million shares traded Thursday.
(c) The Canadian Press 2006
