Cenovus Energy is selling its Suffield crude oil and natural gas operations in south-eastern Alberta to International Petroleum Corporation for $512 million.

In the deal, announced Monday, International Petroleum will get Cenovus’s properties on the Canadian Forces Base Suffield and the adjacent Alderson property. The sale is expected to close before the end of the year.

Earlier this month Cenovus announced it would sell its Greater Pelican Lake assets – including its Pelican Lake conventional heavy oil operations and “other miscellaneous assets” to Canadian Natural Resources for $975 million. That deal is expected to close on Sept. 30.

Cenovus said the net proceeds from both sales will go toward covering the $3.6-billion bridge loan it required earlier this year for the acquisition of all of ConocoPhillips’s Canadian oil sands and natural gas assets for $17.7 billion. The deal shifted the Houston-based company’s 50 per cent stake in oil sands assets that the two companies previously co-owned to Cenovus, as well as ConocoPhillips’s conventional oil and natural gas assets in west-central Alberta and northeastern British Columbia's Deep Basin.

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“We’re right on target with the financial plan we put in place to deleverage our balance sheet following our recent transformational acquisition of assets in Western Canada,” Cenovus CEO Brian Ferguson said in the company’s Monday press release. Cenovus is one of a number of Canadian companies who have been busy picking up oil sands assets from international players since late last year. 

International Petroleum – a Vancouver-based member of the Lundin Group – said in a release the Suffield purchase will “more than triple” its production and reserves.

Suffield and Alderson are expected to produce approximately 6,900 barrels of oil per day and around 102 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2017.