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In an oil patch that has grown into an international darling for energy investors, Canada's deal makers have their eye on a single number as they look to the year ahead: 10.

That is, in rough terms, the percentage of natural gas production in the entire gas-rich Western Sedimentary Basin that is currently for sale.

All together, those assets, many put on the auction block by Suncor Energy Inc., Talisman Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc., are worth somewhere between $5-billion and $10-billion. And many will be sold this year.

Even without accounting for the EnCana Corp. split - which, in dollar-value terms, was the most significant deal of 2009 - many of the biggest deals that year were, again, in the oil patch.

After a year of blockbuster deals - headlined by the Suncor merger with Petro-Canada, and buttressed by mounting global interest in the Canadian oil patch - Calgary's mergers and acquisitions leaders expect those assets to propel another strong round of activity in 2010.

Underlying confidence in the year ahead is the dramatic reorganization that continues in the North American energy industry. The sudden advent of oil sands and shale gas fields, both termed "unconventional" plays, has companies large and small shucking legacy assets and turning to promising new fields. It could lead to several public offerings or major financings this year in the oil sands, where at least a dozen smaller companies are looking at friendlier capital markets and weighing their options. And it's also likely to lead to even more "internationalization" of Canada's oil patch, says Drew MacIntyre, head of the global energy and power group at TD Securities.

Over the past three years, fully two-thirds of the top 20 transactions in Canada have involved a foreign partner.

That ratio is unlikely to change.

In fact, investment bankers believe this will be the year that India makes its first major Canadian energy purchase.

"Everyone who is in a high-growth economy in Asia has looked with envy at the [energy]acquisition spree the Chinese have been on, and they're all trying to say: If they're doing it, we need to do it, too," said Dan Barclay, who heads BMO Nesbitt Burns's Canadian mergers and acquisitions group.

The reason: Much of Asia is resource-poor. Canada, with the second-largest crude reserves in the world, is anything but. It's also home to significant unconventional resources, whose sheer cost - oil sands mines costs billions to build, while shale gas wells can cost 10 times as much as traditional wells - has placed the oil patch in a great, deal-intensive race for size. That's true among junior companies in smaller plays, like those at Cardium and Bakken in Western Canada, both of which are expected to continue as fonts of deal making.

And it's true among even large companies. It is entirely conceivable that 2010 could witness another deal like the massive $31-billion (U.S.) sale of XTO Energy Inc. to Exxon Mobil Corp. late last year, which was done in part because even a company of XTO's size did not have the scale to fully develop its own lands.

"One of the key trends is companies aligning their financial strengths and capabilities with the opportunities and exposures that they have in their assets," said Art Korpach, head of global oil and gas for CIBC World Markets Inc. "That means that people will look to potential M&A and joint-venture structures."

That same trend is also opening new possibilities, especially in Western Canada, where the corporate off-loading of old natural gas assets has flooded the market.

"The big question everyone's asking is, who is going to buy it and where are they going to get the money?" said Shane Fildes, global group head for energy at BMO Nesbitt Burns.

The answer may lie in new buyers, such as private equity groups; contrarians, who believe new technology will reinvigorate plays left for dead; and the ingenious minds who have long sustained Calgary and are looking for new models to fill the yield gap left by the demise of the income trusts. The latter could be among the most intriguing in the coming year.

"The one nice thing about working in the patch is there will always be new, innovative structures," Mr. MacIntyre said. "It's an entrepreneurial, creative town."

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