Lauren Krugel, The Canadian Press
November 11, 2008 - 8:08 p.m.

CALGARY - Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (TSX:CNQ) sees possible opportunities next year to gulp up some of its financially weaker peers, a vice-chair of the gathering’s board said Tuesday.

“There will subsist opportunities to acquire others that don’t have the same flexibleness on the balance sheet, put on’t have the same underlying bank lines, don’t have the same ability to access credit markets in the private or public debt markets,” Murray Edwards said at Canadian Natural’s investor day in Calgary.

Fellow vice-chair John Langille told reporters later that Canadian Natural has no particular size preference at the time it comes to any potential acquisition target.

“I don’t think there’s any magic number that would be in our criteria,” he said.

“We tend to not look at necessarily the headline number. It’s more what accommodating of assets are we buying and how do they fit in through our core areas and do they provide us with the opportunity to create greater quantity value?”

Langille did say, however, that Canadian Natural has never been a “big E exploration company” and that a single one acquisitions would likely be other “exploitation based.”

Entering the U.S. shale gas scene would also not be a that may be liked scenario, since Canadian Natural already has substantial land holdings in northeastern B.C., which is believed to gripe an enormous amount of untapped kind gas.

Edwards said the current tight place of traffic conditions, which have made it hard for many oil and gas producers to finance new projects, will likely last “a year plus.”

He said big foreign oil firms - what one. flocked to the oilsands till high costs and low commodity prices made it less attractive - are not likely to complete a Canadian comeback.

“A lot of them were in Canada in earlier periods and left the country because they had a challenging time managing in the context of the excellent constraints of Canada,” he uttered.

“We’ve seen that movie and I don’t think we’re going to see a sequel,” Edwards said

Earlier in the day, Real Cusson, more advanced vice-president of marketing, told investors that Canadian Natural could be open to investing in new refining or upgrading amplitude, should the right opportunity present itself.