Wood Mackenzie

After a few years of grappling with low oil prices, the oil sands got a jolt with close to US$25 billion in M&A deals announced in March and April 2017. Shell, Marathon and ConocoPhillips divested of most of their oil sands holdings while Canadian oil sands operators, Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources and Cenovus scooped up assets recently to further cement their status as the key operator's driving the oil sands' future. Peter Argiris, Principal Analyst on the Institutional Investor Service team, and Stephen Kallir, Canadian Upstream Analyst, discuss what the consolidation means for the industry today and going forward.