Opportunity Evaluation

Your opportunities arrive faster than your team can convert them.

We are the independent evaluation desk for Canadian upstream operators. Every opportunity converted onto your assumptions, the portfolio maintained monthly. Backed by ReservoirIQ, our bottom-up valuation infrastructure. Bank-led M&A packages, JV proposals, internal divestment candidates, organic development, greenfield options. Each arrives on its own price deck and methodology. We convert them while your technical teams and corporate planners run annual reserves and capital planning.

Have a confidential conversation about your opportunities
ReservoirIQ operator page showing CNQ corporate NAV waterfall

The problem

The work nobody on your team has time for

Our work week in Business Development and Commercial Strategy often looks like this. Bank-led acquisition packages arrive multiple per quarter, sometimes per month. PE-backed sellers run targeted processes. Operators float JV proposals and partner farmout invitations. Internal teams surface divestment candidates and organic development options. Greenfield expansion candidates land on your desk with geology, regulatory, and capital work to clear. Each opportunity arrives on a different price deck, a different methodology, a different probabilistic versus deterministic posture, often with a third-party reserve report on the seller's assumptions that you have already paid for and now need to redo against your own.

Your reservoir engineer, corporate planner, and commercial team can convert any one opportunity onto a comparable basis in two to four weeks. They are already running the annual reserves filing and the capital plan. The funnel keeps moving. Strip moves, and the static point estimate from last month is now wrong. Pass on an opportunity and the work is shelved. Move to bid or sanction and the investment committee needs a defensible answer in days. The integrated reservoir, commercial, economics, and operating team that does this properly is not a fractional cost to staff internally.

That is the function we operate.

Engagement model

How the engagement works

Onboard

Initial portfolio onboarding

Your existing opportunity set, recent bank-led packages, internal development pipeline, and corporate development priorities, all modeled bottom-up against your assumptions. Every asset reconciled to your price deck, your methodology, your fiscal regime. Your team gets one comparable view of the funnel in three to six weeks.

Maintain

Ongoing maintained portfolio

Monthly delivery. Updated NPV under current strip, regulatory and fiscal-regime updates folded in, new opportunities standardized as they arrive. Your team can pull up a defensible NPV the morning of an investment committee meeting without re-engaging us.

Sharpen

Scenario on demand

When a specific opportunity moves toward bid, sanction, or pass, we run the scenarios that decision needs. Sensitivities, regulatory tightening, integration economics under your operating assumptions, FID-grade scenarios for organic development candidates. Returned within days.

What makes the desk work

Five things lined up

A single integrated desk delivering the work of a five-person team is only economical if five things line up. Here is what lines them up.

1. Senior throughput

A single principal carries reservoir, commercial, and economics views across every opportunity, with no associate stack between you and the work. The integrated team your firm would otherwise stand up runs through one seat. Cost discipline and judgment continuity follow from that.

2. Three lenses, one head

Reserve evaluators look at reserves. Banks look at commercials. Reservoir consultants look at reservoir. We carry all three on every opportunity, with operating depth that pressure-tests capex, opex, and execution timing against what the asset behaves like in the field.

3. Proprietary research infrastructure

ReservoirIQ is the bottom-up upstream model behind the desk. Every Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin well, every public Canadian E&P, the major thermal facilities, and the integrated downstream chain. The model updates with our analytical priorities, on engagement timelines, not vendor release cycles.

4. Maintained capability

Reserve reports age. So do FID-stage economics. An ongoing engagement converts a series of static point estimates into a continuously refreshed view your team can act on. Strip moves, fiscal regimes shift, opportunities and development candidates accumulate, and your portfolio stays current.

5. Sponsor-side independence

No sell-side incentive. No software subscription to renew. No fund cycle the answer needs to fit. Recommendations move with what we see, including when the recommendation is to pass. Your opportunity portfolio stays inside your evaluation envelope.

Backed by ReservoirIQ

The valuation infrastructure behind the desk

The desk runs on ReservoirIQ, the valuation infrastructure we built and operate to model every Canadian upstream asset bottom-up. It is how we deliver evaluation work in days, maintain a portfolio for a client without a team behind us, and reconcile any opportunity against your price deck within minutes.

ReservoirIQ operators list ranked by NAV-to-market

Operators ranked by NAV-to-market

Every public Canadian E&P, ranked by NAV-to-market under three published price decks. Toggle between conservative reserve-evaluator pricing and bull-case strip in sub-second.

For your team: when a target operator surfaces in your evaluation pipeline, we can show within minutes whether the market is pricing it inside or outside the reserve-evaluator consensus, and explain what is driving the gap.

ReservoirIQ bottom-up corporate NAV waterfall

Bottom-up corporate NAV

Every operator's NAV waterfall built component by component. Conventional production, SAGD pads, mining inventory, refining capacity, midstream, land value, debt, ARO. All post-tax, all reconciled against TSX market cap.

For your team: when the investment committee asks why we like or do not like an asset, the answer is grounded in the value drivers, not in seller-side aggregations.

ReservoirIQ SAGD scenario workbench

Scenario workbench

Eighty-eight editable variables per thermal facility. Pad geology, capacity, capex, opex itemization, royalty parameters, upgrader product slate. Save scenarios. Share via permalink. A/B compare any two.

For your team: when the opportunity moves to bid or sanction, we run the scenarios that matter for your investment committee, including under fiscal-regime tightening. The sensitivity tornado falls out of the same model.

The full platform tour, data sources, and methodology

How we work

From discovery to decision

Step 1 Discovery

Confidential scoping in one week

Your opportunity flow over the last 12 months, current pipeline, the price deck and methodology your team uses internally, the fiscal regime assumptions baked into your corporate model. From there we agree the portfolio scope and engagement cadence.

Step 2 Standardize

Bottom-up portfolio onboarding

Three to six weeks to model your existing portfolio bottom-up against your assumptions. Every asset reconciled to your price deck, methodology, and operating-cost benchmarks. Your team gets one comparable view of every opportunity in flight.

Step 3 Maintain

Monthly maintained delivery

Monthly refresh delivered as a maintained portfolio file. NPV under current strip, regulatory and fiscal-regime updates flagged, new opportunities folded in as they arrive. Your team's view of the funnel stays current without re-engaging us.

Step 4 Decide

Decision-grade scenarios on demand

When an opportunity moves toward bid, sanction, or pass, we deliver the sensitivity, comp set, and decision-grade summary within days. The output is structured for your investment committee.

Engagement examples

From active and prior engagements

Anonymized. Specifics obscured to protect client confidentiality.

Bid evaluation

$1.2B SAGD acquisition. $300M reserves gap.

A Canadian large-cap operator received a bank-led bid package for a thermal asset bundle, supported by a third-party reserve report on the seller's price deck. We rebuilt the asset under the buyer's deck, fiscal-regime assumptions, and operating-cost benchmarks. The reconciled NAV came in $300M below the seller-side report under the buyer's lens, primarily on opex itemization and reservoir-impairment posture for legacy pads. The buyer passed. The asset was subsequently written down on the seller's books two years later.

Maintained portfolio

Funnel of 14 opportunities, refreshed monthly.

A PE-backed Canadian operator engaged us to maintain a running view of the WCSB and East Coast offshore opportunity set. Fourteen assets standardized to their price deck and methodology. Monthly refreshes through a 9-month strip cycle, including two regulatory updates and one fiscal-regime sensitivity run. The corporate development team committed to two acquisitions in the period, both supported by ReservoirIQ output, and declined four others on the standardized comparison.

Ready to talk?

If you are running an opportunity evaluation function and the volume is moving faster than your team can convert, we should talk. Engagements run as ongoing retainers, scaled to portfolio size, and start with a one-week confidential discovery.

Have a confidential conversation about your opportunities