CALGARY (CP) -- Calling his company the ''last man standing'' of Canada's small, independent oilsands players, the chief executive of Deer Creek Energy Ltd. says the firm can take its time selecting possible partners for its multi-billion dollar development plans.
''It's left us in a good position,'' Glen Schmidt said Tuesday outside of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers annual investment conference in Calgary.
Schmidt said that less than five years ago, when cash was harder to find, companies like Deer Creek would be willing to take on partners who simply brought capital to the table. Now, with the market more than willing to invest in energy companies - especially those with oilsands leases - prospective partners need to bring something more, like upgrading or mining skills.
''If we can leverage the asset we have, which is relatively unique, to capture those skills, that would be accretive to us doing it independently.''
Calgary-based Deer Creek [TSX:DCE] has an 84 per cent operating stake on a large oilsands lease in northern Alberta sandwiched between lands held by Syncrude Canada and Canadian Natural Resources' C$10-billion Horizon project, which is currently under construction.
Since the beginning of the year, a handful of smaller players have entered partnership agreements with larger companies interested in gaining a bigger stake in the oilsands.
Chinese companies have been especially keen, with two deals done in recent months.
In late May, the large Chinese refiner Sinopec Group paid C$105 million for a 40 per cent stake in privately-owned Synenco Energy Inc.'s Northern Lights oilsands project.
Northern Lights is expected to cost C$4.5 billion to develop over the next five years and produce 100,000 barrels per day for more than 30 years.
In April, China National Offshore Oil Corp. bought nearly 17 per cent of privately held Canadian oilsands company MEG Energy Corp. for C$150 million.
And in March, Petro-Canada [TSX:PCA] unveiled a deal to pay tiny UTS Energy Corp. [TSX:UTS] C$300 million for a 60 per cent stake in its planned Fort Hills project. Petro-Canada will also pay 60 per cent of development costs going forward - a figure which could easily reach C$5 billion as the company looks to build an open-pit mine and upgrading refinery that could produce 100,000 barrels per day.
Deer Creek, which went public last year, told analysts Tuesday it would ''consider and review'' taking on partners to help develop its aggressive oilsands plans.
But Schmidt said his company wasn't actively seeking partners.
''Other operators such as MEG or UTS or Synenco - for the particular circumstances they were in, they were in the market and there were 'for sale' signs on the lawn,'' he said.
''Well, if there's that many signs on the lawn, then it probably serves us well not to have one too.''
Schmidt also said the prices for partnership transactions have risen significantly in the past four years.
Deer Creek hopes to start up a small, 10,000 barrels-per-day oilsands facility by next year using steam technology to access reserves located deep underground.
Using a strategy of incremental expansion, the company hopes to boost production up to 40,000 barrels per day by 2009, just in time to help pay for its large, open-pit mine plans.
Deer Creek hopes to build a 200,000 barrels per day mine in four phases between 2010 and 2019 with about 2.3 billion barrels of recoverable bitumen in place.
In trading on the Toronto stock market Tuesday, Deer Creek shares rose 50 cents to C$15. The company's shares began trading last July for slightly more than C$9 per share.
