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Talisman Energy Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer, Hal Kvisle is photographed on Thursday, April 11, 2013.Chris Bolin/The Globe and Mail

The news that Repsol SA approached Talisman Energy Inc. about a deal shouldn't surprise anyone. Hal Kvisle practically begged for deep-pocketed bidders.

Since implementing his strategic shakeup in 2013, Mr. Kvisle, Talisman's chief executive, has told anyone within earshot that he would sell assets because he needs to right-size the company. Even though he favours some assets, he's gone so far as to say that anything could be sold at the right price.

So while Wednesday's news will lead some people to assume Repsol wants a full-blown takeover of Talisman, that may not be the only option. Talisman even said it has been approached by the Spanish giant "with regards to various transactions," only one of which may be a complete takeout.

Within its portfolio, Talisman would especially love to do a deal for its North Sea assets, which require heavy capital spending. Mr. Kvisle tried to spin these in a positive light a few months back. "The prize is there. There's a very large amount of oil left in most of these fields," he said on a conference call, adding that "one of our largest sources of probable unrecovered or undeveloped oil in Talisman's reserve base are those reservoirs in the U.K., even though we've reduced our ownership position by half. So, still a pretty big and interesting asset that needs some work."

But, he admitted, "the challenge is controlling the costs of everything that we do," especially because the North Sea assets have some pretty old machinery that has been around for decades.

Talisman's Eagle Ford assets could also be appealing. The company had troubles in this region early on because it couldn't drill quickly enough and that sent costs soaring. But Talisman has started to turn the operations around, and this region is one of the sexier ones in the energy world.

Asked if he'd ever sell Talisman's Eagle Ford operations, Mr. Kvisle said this is an asset "we very much like these days" but then went on to say "almost any asset in Talisman would be for sale at the right price. That's the business we're in: developing assets. Sometimes we produce them out to depletion, but many other times, these assets get sold to other people where they might have other assets or operations in the area."

The assets we know for sure that he'd love to keep are Talisman's Western Canadian operations, including Edson and as well as operations in the U.S. Marcellus shale. Mr. Kvisle also likes Corridor and the Malaysian business "simply because they've been with us for a long time." He's also fond of the Vietnam operations.

But even though they're close to his heart, "for the right price, we'll do anything," he said.

And in an interview with the Globe in May, Mr. Kvisle made it clear it wouldn't view any sort of approach in a hostile way. "We haven't actively pursued a sale of the company. I've been quite open with people that if anyone wants to come forward and wants to purchase the company, I'm not negative on that at all, as those things happen," he said.

Repsol clearly got the message.

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