As Strathcona Resources Ltd. announced a new acquisition, accompanied by a venture to go public, the company’s top executive said the plan is for the stock to be available to public investors around October. 

Adam Waterous, the chief executive officer and managing partner at Waterous Energy Fund, said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg Tuesday that the plan is for shareholders to vote on the transaction in the fall, followed by a public listing of the stock. 

“The plan right now is for Pipestone shareholders to vote on this transaction in late September, and we would then complete the transaction in early October and that's when the stock would start trading,” Waterous said. 

On Tuesday, Strathcona announced a deal to purchase Pipestone Energy Corp. in an $8.6-billion transaction and to go public. Strathcona said that the acquisition will result in the new company becoming the fifth largest oil producer across Canada. 

Waterous said the acquisition and move toward a public listing are part of a broader strategy. He said that around six and a half years ago, sentiment toward the oil industry was poor.

“Everyone [was] worried about pipelines, everyone was worried about CO2 emissions. And we thought a little bit differently. We said: ‘We actually think that the economics are going to improve, that egress is going to improve, and that emissions are going to come down,’” Waterous said. 

He said that line of thinking spurred the company’s “core area consolidation strategy, where essentially what we did is we went into three different areas in Western Canada, each one of which we thought was attractive.” 

As part of the strategy, Waterous said the company made acquisitions in each of the three areas of interest.

“That's how we ended up making [the] acquisition for Pipestone, which does bring us into the public markets,” Waterous said. 

According to Waterous, the vast majority of Canadian oil sands production occurs in the Athabasca area, while around five per cent is in the Cold Lake region and neighbouring Saskatchewan. 

“What we observed is that the economics of those projects are actually very attractive. You don't have to ship the oil so far South they're already closer to market you have better quality oil,” Waterous said. 

With files from The Canadian Press.