The S&A Oil Report
June 18, 2008
Update: Oilsands Quest
Oilsands Quest (AMEX: BQI), our Saskatchewan oil sand company, gained 13% on Friday, June 13. It climbed straight past our "buy up to" price and never looked back.
I reviewed the company in the most recent S&A Oil Report, and I'm more impressed with it now than when I first recommended it in March.
Roughly 100 companies own a little more than 30,000 square miles of Alberta oil sands. Doing a quick calculation suggests each company holds, on average, about 300 square miles or 1% of the total. But, of course, that fails to account for the large tracts held by companies, like Suncor and Syncrude, which dominate the total area. So really, most of those 100 companies hold much less than 300 square miles.
At the same time, that land is increasingly valuable. Companies are willing to squabble over the seemingly small patches they own.
For instance, Ivanhoe Energy, a newcomer to the tar sands, bought about 37 square miles of leases from Talisman Energy for a whopping $105 million. That works out to $2.8 million per square mile of undeveloped tar sand leases.
Oilsands Quest owns about 1,200 square miles of tar sands – much, much more than the typical oil sands company.
On top of that, if we use the Ivanhoe/Talisman deal as a benchmark, Oilsands Quest is worth about $3.2 billion. That value is 163% higher than its current price.
With that in mind, we can comfortably raise our upper buying limit to $6.15 per share. We are up 48% on the position already, and I still see the potential for us to double our money from here.
Good investing,
Matt Badiali
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