Toronto equity firm looking for billion-dollar oilsands deals for client

Chief investment officer Jean-Marc Bougie said the partnership deal will allow Abacus to buy in on the resulting purchase or joint venture agreement at a lower level than that taken by the sovereign fund.

“We have an agreement with a sovereign wealth fund — so effectively extremely deep pockets — and the mandate we have with them is to identify $1-billion-plus oil plays where the objective would be to either take a participation or outright purchase of the entities or assets,” he said.

He said he could not identify the partner because it has asked to remain anonymous.

Bougie said the agreement gives Abacus more financial clout than it’s had before and it’s hoped that putting out a news release on the deal will both bring attention to Abacus and scare up opportunities for investment.

“We want to let people in the oilpatch know we’ve partnered with a sovereign fund,” he said. “Obviously, we’re already speaking with the usual suspects but we want to make sure people understand that we are a serious player.”

Several sovereign wealth funds have invested in Western Canada, starting with Chinese CNOOC Canada, which paid $150 million for a 17 per cent stake in MEG Energy Corp. in 2005.

Last year, PetroChina paid $1.9 billion for a 60 per cent interest in two oilsands projects owned by Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. and Korea National Oil Corp. made a deal to buy Harvest Energy Trust for $4.1 billion.

Abacus has offices in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal and Calgary and about 40 employees.

dhealing@calgaryherald.com