Near-Record Cash `Comfort' for Canada Oil Firms Amid Price Rout
- Oil producers face longer recovery amid long list of projects
- Big acquisitions on back burner as companies focus on costs
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Canada’s biggest oil producers are sitting on a near-record pile of cash, giving them the resources to keep investing and manage debt while weathering the worst price rout in a generation.
The five largest oil producers including Suncor Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc. have a combined C$8.5 billion ($6.4 billion) in cash and cash equivalents, an increase of 7.6 percent from a year earlier and more than twice the levels seen during 2009 downturn. The figures, which are little changed from a record C$9 billion in 2014, don’t include the proceeds from Imperial Oil Ltd.’s recent sale of its Esso-brand gas stations for C$2.8 billion.