Saturn Oil & Gas Inc. announced a $93 million deal in southeast Saskatchewan this week that is projected to transform its portfolio from producing well under 1,000 boe/d in 2020 to over 7,500 boe/d in 2021.

It is the fourth largest deal for assets in the SE SK area over the past five years based on acquisition cost, according to CanOils M&A data.

“This may only be the second deal focused purely on the area to be announced this year and the first to have a value of over $10 million, but southeast Saskatchewan was a relatively busy area for upstream deal-making before the pandemic struck,” said Eoin Coyne, senior M&A analyst at CanOils.

CanOils data shows that SE SK has seen a total of $1.7 billion over 22 individual deals agreed that were focused solely on assets in the region since the start of 2017. No Canadian area outside of Alberta saw more upstream deals than this over the same timeframe.

“Time will tell if this Saturn deal signals or sparks any kind of return to pre-pandemic activity levels, although it must be noted that the deal profile doesn’t quite fit the mould,” Coyne said.

“Historically, deals in SE SK have been of the ‘bolt-on’ type, with small incremental production added to acquirers’ portfolios here and there. Saturn’s deal here totally transforms the company’s stature and outlook.”