Pipeline News January 2018

PIPELINE NEWS SASKATCHEWAN’S PETROLEUM MONTHLY Canada Post Publication No. 40069240

January 2018

www.pipelinenews.ca

Vol. 10/8

L&C Trucking

Service Since 1956

306.634.7341 NEW TO FLEET

45 Ton Picker with Whip Line, Compliments Our 40 & 30 Ton Pickers

24

HOURS Personalized

Service

PIPE CUSTODIAN HOT SHOT SERVICE TANK & TREATER MOVING

lctrucking.ca

GENERAL OILFIELD HAULING PUMP JACK HAULING & PICKING

24 HWY 39 E • Estevan, SK

•

gm@lctrucking.ca

ESTEVAN THE ENERGY CITY Part 2

Bert Baxter Transport Ltd. of Estevan has been in business for 60 years. This is their new yard, which started construction in 2011 and is still a work in progress. The downturn changed their plans, but more buildings are in the works for the site, which would allow the company to finally consolidate its many locations into one campus.

See related story Page A11. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

Husky investing $700 million into Lloyd thermal A3

NDP leadership candidate Trent Wotherspoon on energy A23

NDP leadership candidate Ryan Meili on energy A21

REGISTER NOW FOR : Industrial Mechanic (Millwright)  18 Weeks

 Estevan

 Starts February 26, 2018

Southeast College Third Class Power Engineering - Theory Only  15 Weeks

 Estevan

 Starts February 5, 2018

Register online at www.southeastcollege.org or call 1.866.999.7372

A2

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

Performance Pump consolidates into one new location

By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – Life got a lot easier for Estevan’s Performance Pump Service Ltd., when they consolidated three shops into one on the west side of Estevan.

The nearly-sevenyear-old surface pump company moved into the vacant former Packers Plus building this past summer.

Kent Phillips and Cort Barker are partners

in the company. They spoke to Pipeline News on Nov. 28.

“We got settled in here in July,” said Phillips.

They started the move in May, and it took a while.

Performance Pump was originally in a shop on Sixth Street in the centre of Estevan. They took over the second half of the building a little later, but it was essentially a second shop, not joined with the first. The third shop was

Clark Driedger recently joined Performance Pump Service Ltd., launching their repair shop. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

the old Arizona Mechanical shop on Fifth Street, which they took over in 2014. It was four blocks over.

“It was a bit of juggling,” Phillips said, noting there was always the question of who was going where, and trying to figure out which building parts might be in.

“We needed more space. It was a pain in the butt,” he said.

The old Packers Plus building was vacant for nearly a year. At 17,000 square feet, it had been expanded as the previous tenant was one of the key players in the thenBakken boom. That square footage is only slightly more than the combined 16,500 square feet Performance Pump had between its three shops, but being all together, and with a much better layout, makes a world of difference. Even so, they could still use a little more space, and have added some cold storage.

The facility has three mechanics bays, a shipping and receiving bay, and a machine shop bay at the south end.

Barker, who looks after the warehouse side, said the new, combined facility makes it much easier for him. “Now parts are in one building, instead of three.”

“Our main business is service of water disposal and water injection pumps,” said Phillips. They also do some fabrication of pump packages, and use a third party for structural and pressure welding.

“We’ve been very fortunate,” said Barker, with regards to surviving the downturn.

He noted they sell pumps as well, just not a lot recently. In addition to triplex pumps, they also sell progressive cavity pumps and vapour recovery units (VRU).

They even have their own design of VRU. Most of their work centres around triplex pumps, but they do all surface pumps, including centrifugal pumps. They supply charge pumps that feed horizontal pumping systems (HPS) as well.

They can do laser alignments of HPS units.

Performance Pump has 17 people on staff, including the ownership.

“We grew by one (person) in September.

We opened up a repair shop division,” Phillips said. That will take care of things like chemical pumps, rod rotators, flow meters and pressure recorders. He added that the repair service has been well-received by their customer base.

Kelly Phillips is a machinist at Performance Pump Service Ltd. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

Kent Phillips, left, and Cort Barker own and operated Performance Pump Service Ltd. in Estevan. Before them is a vapour recovery unit of Performance Pump’s design.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk During the downturn, they had laid off one person, but compared to most other businesses in the oilfield services sector, that was a very small amount.

Phillips also said they have been very fortunate throughout the downturn.

“We made do. Employees took holidays.

Some days didn’t get eight hours. It was better than

the alternative.”

As a key volunteer with Estevan Minor Baseball (the organization named an award after him last spring), sometimes Phillips had Performance Pump employees working at the ball park all day.

“We see the value in our employees,” he said, adding they were kept at the same pay.

Things started picking up in October and November of 2016. They hadn’t really seen the downturn hit until the beginning of that year. Now, things are looking up.

“You can see it in the traffic in town. Our crews are out every single day, with only a handful left in the shop,” Phillips said.

Late fall tends to be a busy period, as companies have projects they want to get done before Christmas so they can have a troublefree winter.

While Phillips has had long involvement with minor baseball, Barker’s community service lies with the local Royal Canadian Legion. He had previously served in the Canadian Army in the armoured corps, including overseas, with two tours in Bosnia and one in Afghanistan. Barker also coaches minor hockey.

Crescent Point is proud to be part of your community. crescentpointenergy.com

Sharing The Energy

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A3

TOP NEWS

Husky investing $700 million in Mervin and Edam area SIX RIGS DRILLING IN NORTHWEST SASKATCHEWAN FOR HUSKY

By Brian Zinchuk Calgary, Lloydminster – Husky Energy is continuing with its strategy to invest into small scale thermal projects, and lots of them.

On Dec. 4 the company announced it is sanctioning another two Lloyd thermal projects.

They are planned for Westhazel (west of Mervin) and Edam Central. Each create about 30 full time permanent jobs and about 200-250 jobs during construction. Each represents an investment of about $350 million ($700 million total).

In announcing it 2018 budget, the company said, “Husky’s operational focus in 2018 is to ramp up the Tucker Thermal Project, Phase 1 of the Sunrise Energy Project and the BD Project in Indonesia to full rates. In addition, the company will integrate its newlyacquired Superior Refinery, advance six Lloyd thermal projects, move

forward with the Liuhua 29-1 field development offshore China and progress the West White Rose Project offshore Newfoundland and Labrador.”

Their thermal bitumen projects, which include Lloyd, Tucker and Sunrise, will see a substantial boost in the budget. Those areas had $560 to $590 million designated for 2017. The 2018 budget increases those to $895 to $930 million.

Total capital spending is expected to be $2.9 to $3.1 billion, less than the estimated $3.3 billion annual average capital spending forecast in the five-year plan at the company’s 2017 investor day, reflecting greater capital efficiency.

Upstream project spending is expected to be largely allocated to growing the Lloyd thermal portfolio, with 60,000 bpd of new production scheduled to be brought online between 2019 and 2021, and the construction of

Husky announced two more Lloyd thermal projects, like the one seen here at Rush Lake. Four more thermal projects are already underway. Each is projected to produce 10,000 bpd. File photo. the 75,000-bpd West White Rose Project in the Atlantic region (52,500 bpd Husky working interest), with first oil planned in 2022.

The Western Canada asset disposition program is now substantially complete. Since December 2015, about 52,000 boepd

of higher-cost legacy production has been sold or is expected to be sold by the end of 2017, with an associated reduction in asset retirement obligations of approximately $840 million. Over the same period, Husky added approximately 66,000 boepd of new, lower-cost

production, largely from the thermal and Offshore businesses.

The 10,000 bpd Rush Lake 2 thermal project has been accelerated and is expected to come on production in the first quarter of 2019.

Dee Valley is expected to be ready the first half of

Now Available In 25” Tall For Multi-Pad Well Setups New Walk Through Access Door - patent pending PATENT # 2362105

C O N TA I N M E N T S LT D .

2020. Spruce Lake North and Spruce Lake Central are expected in the second half of 2020.

The new projects, at Edam Central and Westhazel, are projected to be online in the second half of 2021. Future Lloyd thermal projects, ► Page A4

100% Canadian owned and operated

THE QUICKEST WAY AROUND Suretuf Containments Galvanized Wall

www.suretuf.com

CROSS OVER STAIRS

Suretuf containment packages are a patented (patent #2362105) and P. Eng. certified design. Suretuf containment packages meet or exceed all D-055 (Alberta) and S-O1 (Saskatchewan) secondary containment requirements. Suretuf has been manufacturing containment packages for over 15 years. All package components past and present are compatible with one another – NO DEAD STOCK. The light weight easy to handle DROP PIN connecting panels with new single slide in leg design DO NOT REQUIRE NUTS AND BOLTS FOR ASSEMBLY providing safe, quick and easy installation or complete package relocation without special tools. Further the slide in leg design allows the entire containment system to float with ground heaving while maintaining wall integrity. Suretuf containment packages are a ZERO GROUND DISTURBANCE system.

NO CAULKING OR GASKETS REQUIRED to attach the liner to the containment wall or to attach the walls together. The top mount liner with SQUARE TOP CAP ELIMINATES SHARP HAZARDOUS EDGES providing greater safety when working near or around the wall.

P.eng. Stamped, Patented Design

45° CORNERS NO EXTRA COST

STING DOORS

We Supply, Haul & Install EXPERIENCED SET UP CREWS

*CUTS DOWN ON SETUP TIME. SAVING YOU MONEY. Accessories: Crossover Stairs • Walk Through Access Door • Geo Textiles • Pile & Pipe Boots • Various Liners & Thickness • Liner Tape • Liner Welding • Fire Retardant Coating Available

LINER FABRICATION AND REPAIR

(Experienced C.O.R Certified Set Up Crews Available)

WE WILL BUILD TO SUIT OUR CUSTOMER NEEDS • OILFIELD • MINING • AGRICULTURE • WE DO IT ALL!

Greg Gessner • Cell: (780) 214-7808 • Email: greg@suretuf.com Clayton Gessner • Cell: (780) 205-1599

(780) 875-0032

A4

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

Cookie cutter 10,000 bpd projects ◄ Page A3 all of which are expected to produce 10,000 bpd, are planned to proceed at an average of two projects per year.

Over the next four years Husky expects to grow its Lloyd thermal production by 60,000 bpd, with more projects in the wings.

A five-week partial turnaround at the Lloydminster Upgrader is planned in the second quarter of 2018, with expected utilization rate of 70 per cent during the maintenance period.

In response to the announcement, Premier Brad Wall posted on Facebook, “Thank you to Husky Energy for investing $700 million in two new Saskatchewan heavy oil facilities.

“We have worked to foster a positive business climate that is open to investment and growth; in this case creating up to 300 new construction jobs and 30 permanent jobs.

“That is why our made-in-Saskatchewan climate plan does not include a carbon tax,” Wall said.

December also saw Husky dramatically increase its active drilling rig count in Saskatchewan. As of Dec. 13 the company was No. 3 on the leader board of top 5 active operators in Canada, according to sister publication Rig Locator (riglocator.ca). Whereas they typically would have one or two rigs working in northwest Saskatchewan, that number jumped to six, likely the highest number the company has had in the region in years.

Precision Drilling Rig 192 was working at Paradise Hill, and Rig 197 was at Rush Lake.

Akita Drilling Ltd. Rig 29 was at Tangleflags, while their Rig 8 was at Dee Valley. Big Gully had Precision Drilling Rig 198 and Akita Drilling Rig 6 working close to each other.

They created their own jobs: Thirsty Bird Pumpjack Sales & Service

By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – When Tim Miller and Curtis Thorkelson lost their jobs with a major international artificial lift company when the downturn hit, they needed to find work.

So they formed their own business – Thirsty Bird Pumpjack Sales & Service Ltd. – and created their own jobs. This happened in September 2015, right when oil prices were taking another dive after a slight, short-term recovery. “You ask if we were crazy. We didn’t have much choice at the time. We needed to work,” Thorkelson noted. They both were laid off, along with another person. “That company went from 70some employees to fewer than 10 in Canada,” he said.

They were laid off in the spring of 2015. They knew it was coming, but it was still a shock when it did happen.

They both said, “Everybody’s gone.”

“One of the things we saw, because we worked for big corporations, was that we knew things were slow, but there was still work, but it wasn’t at the margins they wanted,” Thorkelson said.

Miller said many companies were seeking big contracts, and not interested in “the pennies.”

“I’ll collect the pennies. You guys can go collect the big bills, but pennies add up, too.”

Thorkelson said those companies were tripping over nickels to make dollars.

Tim Miller, right, and Curtis Thorkelson stand before a variable frequency drive they carry through their company, Thirsty Bird Pumpjack Sales and Service.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk They’re located in the former Do-All Industries building on Sawyer Road on the east side of Estevan, one of several businesses that has breathed new life into a building that had been empty for a long time after Do-All went bankrupt.

Thorkelson and Miller have two other silent investors in a four-way partnership.

Artificial lift automation “We have basically two separate things that we do,” Thorkelson said.

“Tim takes care of all the pumpjack parts and sales, and I do what’s called artificial lift automation.”

His background is in information technology, and that led to getting into automation with oil companies, specifically geared towards pumpjacks

and ESPs. “We focus on the rod lifts.

We sell a product that’s a pump off controller, either a standalone, or a combo unit, which is a controller built into a VFD (variable frequency drive).”

Fifty to 100 horsepower are the average requirements. “There’s not much demand for smaller, now,” he said.

Quite a few companies used VFDs with a “speed pot,” (potentiometer). That’s a dial that allows the operator to turn the VFD up or down. It’s another product they carry and sell, but they focus on the actual pump off controller units, which, despite their added costs, often pay for themselves pretty quickly. ► Page A5 info@cpenergy.ca

ARC LINE CONSTRUCTION IS NOW OPEN IN CARLYLE, SK

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES UPCOMING POSITIONS

Superintendent Journeyman Pipefitter Equipment Operator (Excavator / Grader) Pipeline Labourer Inquire@ 1-866-455-3804 www.tartan.ca/careers  careers@tartan.ca

O I L & GAS CONSTRUCTI ON & MAI NTE NANCE UNPARALLELED QUALITY / EXCEPTIONAL SAFETY / SASKATCHEWAN BASED / Canadian Plains is a Saskatchewan-based energy service company with offices in Carlyle, Regina, Alida, Lloydminster, North Battleford and Virden Manitoba.

Established in the prairie provinces, we have a strong understanding of the need for relationships and trust with our customers. We support this with a commitment to quality and safety in all the projects we work on. Going beyond the mandatory certifications, we ensure that construction, fabrication and maintenance work meets all customer expectations while still maintaining a safe, responsible job site.

/ PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION / FACILITY CONSTRUCTION / FABRICATION / MAINTENANCE

LOCATIONS CARLYLE

208 North Service Road PO Box 699, Carlyle, SK Phone - (306) 453-3400 Fax - (306) 453-3401

REGINA

3-1025A Wellings Road RM of Sherwood, SK Phone - (306) 352-3400 Fax - (306) 352-3455

VIRDEN

130 Commonwealth Virden, MB Phone - (204) 748-2962 Fax - (204) 748-3251

ALIDA

126 Hwy 361 PO Box 220, Alida, SK Phone - (306) 443-3400 Fax - (306) 443.3401

NORTH BATTLEFORD

201-1321-101 Street PO Box 1390 North Battleford, SK Phone - (306) 937-6100 Fax - (306) 937-6113

LLOYDMINSTER

3804-10th Street PO Box 2536, Lloydminster, SK Phone - (306) 830-9353 Fax - (306) 820-9350

404 8th St. West. Carlyle, SK

| 306.453.1103

WWW.CPENERGY.CA

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A5

Great North Wellhead and Frac opened in Estevan during the depth of the downturn, and grew Estevan – When things were at their darkest during this oil downturn, one company decided it was the right time to open a new location in Estevan. They’ve grown since then.

Great North Wellhead and Frac is part of the Redco Group of companies.

Brendon Grube is the Estevan branch manager. He literally grew up in the business, starting at the age of 16 in another wellhead business his father was a partner in. Now Grube is running his own operation, located on the west side of Estevan.

“There’s six of us here at the moment,” he said on Nov. 30.

“We’re definitely looking to add a couple in the New Year.”

The long-term view is to continue to expand the business, Grube added.

Great North has locations in Swift Current, Kindersley and Estevan within Saskatchewan, as well as Brooks, Red Deer, Bonnyville, Grande Prairie, Edmonton and a sales office in Calgary.

The Estevan location opened in January 2016, right in the

depths of the downturn, when oil prices were plumbing below US$30 per barrel for WTI. “When the downturn started to hit, we got together as a group and looked at it as opportunity,” Grube said, crediting a positive mindset for allowing them to actually grow during that time. They expanded by four branches during the downturn.

During that time the company acquired Amity Industrial and opened Redco International.

Grube said they have the ability to provide quality product at a very competitive and sustainable price.

“We do surface isolation equipment, from surface casing bowl to production wellhead. We can take care of everything from the surface, up,” he said.

This includes new and remanufactured wellhead equipment. Grube noted that remanufactured is important, due to its price point.

“Service is the heart and soul of what makes us successful. Having our service techs that have a wealth of experience and knowledge in the wellhead busi-

ness has gone a long way for us to ensure quality service,” he said.

In Estevan they have three fully operating field service trucks, each with a knuckleboom picker.

When things slow down in Saskatchewan due to spring breakup, they send staff to multiwell frac projects in northern Alberta and British Columbia.

On the frac side of the business, Great North provides a full line of rental frac equipment, from two-inch to seven-inch, and up to 15,000 psi. This includes rentals of frac trees, the complex piping and valve system that is the key component connecting all the frac equipment to the wellbore.

“The frac side of the business is just something we’ve started to get into in the southeast,” Grube said. In 2018 they will have a full line of four-inch, 10,000 psi frac heads.

He noted a lot of companies have turned to injection conversion for waterfloods. They carry Teflon and ENC-coated injection wellheads for that purpose.

For a typical wellhead, their

Automation and pumpjack support ◄ Page A4 “We also sell complete packages, basically all the surface equipment – electric motor, shiv, hub, belts, the VFD with pump off controller, pressure transmitter. We can sell the pumpjack, too. We’re selling everything that can control that pumpjack,” Thorkelson said.

By partnering a motor with the same brand of VFD they sell, they can offer a longer warranty.

In supplying a pumpjack, they act as a middleman, going to a variety of suppliers for the actual pumpjack.

SCADA systems, supervisory control and data acquisition, are a key portion of the automation side of the business.

Thorkelson said, “One of the unique things about the way we operate is we can provide pretty much any form of communication the customer wants. We usually look for the most cost effec-

tive. It’s gotten to the point where everybody’s going cellular, and we’re starting to see cell towers getting overloaded. So for one particular client, their monthly bill was astronomical for cell usage, because ever single well had a cell modem. So what we did was we took and grouped six to ten wells into a singular cell modem using a local radio network.”

By creating a number of small local area networks, they reduced dramatically the cell usage, and its related expense.

“They found something like that pays out pretty quickly,” he added.

Their product is fully web-accessible, and a webbased interface. You can log into a well remotely, start and stop it from your smartphone.

They like to work with local communication companies, using their point-to-multipoint high speed internet services.

Those networks are already in place, and since cellular networks may be less reliable, they can offer this at a lower cost. Operators can use Wi-Fi on the wellsite, as each unit comes with its own, secure Wi-Fi hotspot.

He pulled up a livewell example on his smartphone, showing essentially a live pump card on the phone’s screen. It shows strokes per minute, set points, and other items. It’s especially good for single well batteries, showing tank levels, pressures, flare stack temperatures and recycle pumps. “Basically, any value that you want,” he said. It’s logged for 60 days locally, plus a server system can keep track as long as you want.

It’s also possible to program logic, such as if the tank level is X, do Y. Thirsty Bird uses a cloud-based server for its systems.

With theft from wellsites a consideration,

While other companies were shrinking, Great North Wellhead and Fract was growing. Here Chris McCaskill sets a wellhead onto one of their Estevan-based trucks. Photo by Brian Zinchuk first time on the lease follows the drilling rig move. At that point they install the production wellhead. “We install the frac tree before the frac crew gets there,” he said. “We lubricate a fourinch back pressure valve (BPV) to safely removed the frac head with full well control.”

Then the frac head comes

security cameras are an option for their systems.

“We can bring video directly into our controller, and motion-based alarms,” Thorkelson. It’s possible to block off motion from the pumpjack, for instance.

No matter how good of a camera, it’s never going to replace an operator, he said. Cameras are helpful for isolated wells.

“You get an alarm in the middle of the night. You want to start that jack. You want to make sure it’s safe.

You can look at the jack (with the camera), make sure there’s nobody fooling around in the belt, in the fence, in the crank guards,” Thorkelson said.

It’s about enabling oil companies to make operators more efficient, reducing windshield time, and spending more time with facilities and on maintenance. The system can prioritize wells for attention, depending on parameters like production variance.

off once the frac crew is done and gone. The service rig puts the wellhead back together.

The business is closely tied to drilling, but customers are also constantly doing workovers. As a result, roughly 80 per cent of their work is for new drills, while 20 per cent is for workovers and injection conversions.

Pumpjacks On the pumpjack side of the business, Miller focuses particularly on the parts side. They have relationships with numerous suppliers, allowing them to be competitive by having several different options, like a parts broker. “I can save them time, by sourcing the parts for them,” Miller said.

With six years in with a larger artificial company, he’s got the background to go directly to suppliers for a number of items.

“A lot of it is phone, email, text,” Miller said. It may be the oil company itself, or a maintenance company that orders the parts.

“For some of these companies, I’m their internal parts guy. I’m the one searching.”

With all the cuts in the sector, they need someone who can take the time and find the parts and the best pricing, he noted.

They’ll keep high-

BE PREPARED AND BE SAFE AT THE WORKPLACE WITH RIP’S CLEATS The secret is in the depth of penetration of the cleat tip and rotatability Sharp Cleats, best on ice. Blunt Cleats are for Electrical contractors and Construction sites. CerMac Cleats, Spark Resistance and aggressive on ice.

Beryllium Copper for explosive proof atmospheres.

Check out our website at www.ripscleats.com and let us help you prevent needless accidents!! or call 250-782-4318 Sharp

Blunt

CerMac

Beryllium Copper

47636

volume parts in stock, like seals, bearings, belts, shivs and hubs.

Most companies want quotes these days, and the parts market has significantly reduced inventories overall, including the big suppliers.

“Nobody is sitting on inventory. Basically, they’re sitting on their high-turnover parts,” Miller said.

Miller said thinks there is a lot of pent-up demand out there, as many wells were shut-in during the downturn if a maintenance issue came up.

What’s with a name?

Everybody asks about the origin of their name, Thirsty Bird. Miller said it’s historical.

“Thirsty bird is a nickname for a pumpjack.

It comes from the toy bird that would dip in the water until it go so full, it would tip over,” Thorkelson said, adding that thirsty bird was synonymous with nodding donkey and pumpjack.

A6

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

PIPELINE NEWS

EDITORIAL

Mission Statement:

Pipeline News’ mission is to illuminate importance of Saskatchewan oil as an integral part of the province’s sense of community and to show the general public the strength and character of the industry’s people.

Editorial Contributions:

PUBLISHER Rick Sadick - Estevan 1.306.634.2654 EDITOR Brian Zinchuk - Estevan 1.306.461.5599 Advertising Sales:

SASKATCHEWAN & MANITOBA • Estevan 1.306.634.2654

Deanna Tarnes - Advertising Manager

Candace Wheeler

Teresa Hrywkiw Production:

• Estevan 1.306.634.2654

Jihyun Choi

Ana Villarreal 68 Souris Avenue N, Estevan, SK S4A 2M3 1 (306) 634-2654

www.pipelinenews.ca

To submit a stories or ideas: Pipelines News is always looking for stories or ideas from our readers. To contribute please contact your local contributing reporter.

Subscribing to Pipeline News: Pipeline News is a free distribution newspaper, and is now available online at www.pipelinenews.ca Advertising in Pipeline News: Advertising in Pipeline News is a newer model created to make it as easy as possible for any business or individual.

Pipeline News has a group of experienced staff working throughout Saskatchewan and parts of Manitoba, so please contact the sales representative for your area to assist you with your advertising needs.

Special thanks to JuneWarren-Nickle’s Energy Group for their contributions and assistance with Pipeline News.

Published monthly by the Prairie Newspaper Group, a division of Glacier Ventures International Corporation, Central Office, Estevan, Saskatchewan.

Advertising rates are available upon request and are subject to change without notice.

Conditions of editorial and advertising content: Pipeline News attempts to be accurate, however, no guarantee is given or implied. Pipeline News reserves the right to revise or reject any or all editorial and advertising content as the newspapers’ principles see fit. Pipeline News will not be responsible for more than one incorrect insertion of an advertisement, and is not responsible for errors in advertisements except for the space occupied by such errors.

Pipeline News will not be responsible for manuscripts, photographs, negatives and other material that may be submitted for possible publication.

All of Pipeline News content is protected by Canadian Copyright laws. Reviews and similar mention of material in this newspaper is granted on the provision that Pipeline News receives credit. Otherwise, any reproduction without permission of the publisher is prohibited.

Advertisers purchase space and circulation only. Rights to the advertisement produced by Pipeline News, including artwork, typography, and photos, etc., remain property of this newspaper. Advertisements or parts thereof may be not reproduced or assigned without the consent of the publisher.

The Glacier group of companies collects personal information from our customers in the normal course of business transactions. We use that information to provide you with our products and services you request. On occasion we may contact you for purposes of research, surveys and other such matters. To provide you with better service we may share your information with our sister companies and also outside, selected third parties who perform work for us as suppliers, agents, service providers and information gatherers.

Where will we get the CO2 from?

Last month Pipeline News spoke to Grant Fagerheim, president and CEO of Whitecap Resources Ltd. The company has now closed on its $940 million deal to purchase the operating interest in the Weyburn Unit, Saskatchewan’s first and largest CO2 miscible flood. The company has an ambitious drilling program planned, including a resumption of ongoing expansion of the CO2 miscible flood enhanced oil recovery operation. One of the key nuggets from that interview was the fact Whitecap would like to do more, elsewhere.

Fagerheim said, “We do believe carbon capture technology is an important part for, not only now, but into the future. Therefore, (we are) wanting to continue to further our understanding of carbon capture and further develop and expand into assets beyond Weyburn.

“This is not going to just stop at Weyburn. Because of what they have been able to do, Cenovus, with their very strong technical people, we think this can be furthered on a go-forward basis.”

Earlier in the year, Cardinal Energy Ltd. announced it closed their acquisition of the Midale Unit.

Husky has been working on carbon dioxide-based enhanced oil recovery in the Edam area since at least 2008.

Ditto for Tundra Oil & Gas Limited, in the Sinclair field.

Canadian Natural Resource Ltd. tried, but was unsuccessful, to get the CO2 from the Boundary Dam 3 project for its Steelman field.

Clearly there is a desire for more CO2 in the oilfield.

One wonders when Crescent Point Energy Corp. will start getting serious about using CO2, perhaps in its Viewfield Bakken field as it matures. Maybe it’ll be applicable in the Shauvaon field, too?

Ask the Saskatchewan Party leadership candidates, one of whom will be premier by the end of January, and you’re likely to get strong support for carbon capture and storage (CCS), or its new handle, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). But in speaking to both leadership candidates with the New Democratic Party, and you will find neither Dr. Ryan Meili nor Trent Wotherspoon are in favour of building additional carbon capture units.

It’s too expensive, they both say. Considering how much

it cost to put a capture unit on just one unit that produces about 110 megawatts of power, it’s a valid point. Given that either Meili or Wotherspoon could be premier, two years from now, it could mean the end of additional carbon capture.

The oilpatch can’t grow its CO2-EOR efforts on a large scale without significant carbon capture projects.

Husky is doing its own thing, testing smaller scale capture projects. How broadly that can be applied remains to be seen.

On top of all this SaskPower has to consider that natural gas combined cycle benefits greatly from low natural gas prices for the better part of a decade. There aren’t much in the way of indicators that’s going to change anytime soon. Compared to CCS coal or nuclear, it’s pretty cheap, easy and quick to build baseload combined cycle natural gas plants. You can also build them pretty much anywhere, relatively speaking. That means you can build them right beside your main load centres, Regina and Saskatoon, and eliminate most of your line loss, the power lost due to resistance in the power lines over long distances. If you had line loss of around 11 per cent, from Estevan to Saskatoon, you become that much more efficient by putting your next power plant just outside Saskatoon. That also means a corresponding decrease in emissions of 11 per cent for the same power used.

Doing that means no more additional large-scale CO2 for the oilpatch.

The oil industry has a vested interest in seeing SaskPower adding more carbon capture projects. Additional CO2 can extend the life of oilfields by decades, dramatically improving recovery factors. Meili makes the point that using CO2 to get more oil doesn’t really reduce emissions as much, because, let’s face it, you’re using it to produce more fossil fuels. The counter-argument to that is everyone else is still producing oil but not sequestering any carbon dioxide in the process.

There’s more to the decision to go ahead with more carbon capture projects than cost, or carbon taxes. The future of significant parts of our oilpatch could depend upon it.

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

OPINION

The oil company CEO with a straight-shooting blog Most oil company CEOs eschew publicity or speaking plainly.

I don’t know if they are whipped into corporatespeak by their lawyers, boards or public relations people, but generally speaking, they have a very strong filter in place.

And then there’s Michael Binnion, president and CEO of Questerre Energy Corporation for 17 years.

I had a great interview with him on the phone on Dec. 8. The interview stemmed from their recent buy out of their partner in some production near Antler, along the SaskatchewanManitoba border. But I’ve had my eye on his company for many years.

Questerre is one of the very, very few companies who have tried very hard for a very long time to turn Quebec into another fossil fuel-producing province. Specifically, they’ve been trying to develop their million-

plus acres of land rights into the next big shale gas play. Binnion thinks it will be a giant field.

They’ve drilled 15 wells, and had a discovery in 2008 that just keeps looking better and better as other shale gas plays improve the technology.

Instead of a handful of fracs, shale gas operators are now looking at nearly 100, or even more, on longer wells.

Along the way they got swept up in the anti-fossil fuels hysteria in Quebec, the same hysteria that lead to opposition to the Energy East Pipeline. In asking for a regulatory framework they can work within, instead the Quebec government brought in a de facto moratorium on fracking. That was in 2010.

To fight the good fight, Binnion has been working hard on developing the “social licence” to go ahead and develop their play, and along

the way, make La Belle Province self-sufficient in natural gas.

Part of these efforts, which has included a lot of public speaking, is Mike’s Blog, found at the company website, www. questerre.com.

On this blog, he’s not afraid to call a spade a spade. On Nov. 10, he wrote, “We have a new resources Minister in Quebec. Everyone is interested what changes this will mean for our file in Quebec. Not least our opponents.

“The minister has repeated clearly the widely held belief there is no social acceptability for fracking in Quebec. The last minister and the premier said the same thing.

Let’s be clear: industry and myself also say it.

“If it was socially acceptable why did we go through four years of independent environmental reviews and two public consultations?

One of the 134 indepen-

FROM THE TOP OF THE PILE

By Brian Zinchuk

dent studies amusingly discovered that there was no social acceptability.”

Later on, he said, “The main reason is the lack of social acceptability is built on lies and misinformation. Citizens were scared by dramatic claims of fracking lighting taps on fire and other nonsense. It’s like no one remembers this is the reason it became socially unacceptable in the first place. But the claims have been proven false.

“I believe this is the reason the discourse in Quebec has moved away from claims of fracking problems. Credible people and credible media have seen what’s happening in the United States and can’t find the disaster. Just the opposite - the American economy is taking off while its emissions go down.”

That’s just a small sample. The blog is well worth reading.

I asked him about this blog, which is in

DELIVERING MORE FOR YOU

FUEL

Bluewave Energy is a Canadian petroleum distribution leader that specializes in delivering high-quality fuel, propane, lubricants and equipment to a growing number of businesses of all sizes.

WINTER SAVINGS ON SHELL & PHILLIPS 66 LUBRICANTS FOR YOUR

DRILLING RIGS

SERVING SOUTH EAST SASKATCHEWAN

MIKE HANNAN 306-308-0673

Mike.Hannan@parkland.ca

A7

BluewaveEnergy.ca

English and French.

Binnion said, “I used that blog as a way to be able to talk to people in Quebec without being screened by the media.

So really, the blog list are opinion leaders and influencers in this debate, in Quebec, and, of course, interested people outside of Quebec who are wanting to follow what’s going on there.

“We had to get our side of the story out, that we couldn’t just turn the other cheek and let oil and gas opponents set the entire agenda. In my view, it was very essential and effective tool, especially in the beginning of the debate, to get those people in Quebec who are willing to do the research, more than reading the newspaper, to get them to realize there was two sides to this debate.

Absent me and that blog, I don’t know that there would have been even very hyper-engaged experts who would have

PROPANE

realized there was two sides to the story; that it wasn’t just obvious oil and gas was bad for the environment. I was making the case that oil and gas is not bad for the environment. Oil and gas is probably, on a net basis, good for the environment,” he said.

“People aren’t interested in corporatespeak anymore,” he said.

That’s why our pipelines are being blocked, and that’s why the regulatory burden is going up and the carbon tax is going up. Nobody in industry has ever done anything besides corporate-speak, and the public doesn’t understand it.”

“I think it’s really important that we learn to talk to people. People just want to hear it in plain language.”

Amen.

Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News.

He can be reached at brian. zinchuk@sasktel.net.

LUBRICANTS

A8

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

Sanjel creates dedicated remediation division CONSOLIDATES TWO ESTEVAN SHOPS INTO ONE

By Brian Zinchuk Calgary, Estevan – Sanjel Energy Services is launching a new remediation business line, dedicating specific staff and equipment to the growing issue of well abandonments.

CEO Shane Hooker spoke to Pipeline News by phone on Dec. 1. He said, “We’re going to further commit resources to the remediation service line that existed as part of our primary business, previously. We’ve created a standalone division that has separate management and client solutions efforts around the remedial and decommissioning space, which is evermore important with aging infrastructure challenges as they are, around Western Canada.

Abandonments and orphan wells have been rising in the headlines, especially in Alberta. “This is the big conversation point, right now, and has been most discussed in the open in Alberta with the Orphan Well Fund, and the 100,000 inactive wells that currently exist,” Hooker said.

Sanjel consolidated its Estevan operations into a new location in the summer of 2017. The shop is on the west side of Estevan.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk “We believe this is a Western Canadian Basin opportunity, and we’re going to be targeting it across the basin.”

“In Estevan, we’ve got a dedicated resource in a pumping unit, and we’re looking to add another one for that very purpose.”

“Right now, we’re going to stick to the cement-

 Flowline Jetting  Frac Fluid Heating  Back Pressure Trucks  Steam Heaters  Hot Oiling  Flowline Cleaning  Tank Cleaning

ing and acidizing end to the opportunity, with our eyes wide-open around other ways we can provide a more efficient, fulsome solution to customers, which could include service rigs or wireline or surface remediation – all the other pieces that go along with properly abandoning or decommissioning

 Dry Steamer Boiler  Vac Trucks  Water Hauling  Oilfield Turnaround Maintenance  Hydrovacs  Vapour Phasing  TDG

infrastructure. Right now, our focus is the cementing piece,” Hooker said.

Asked if those other services would be in-house or third party, he said they could be either way. Their growth strategy is not limiting what that could be. “We’re looking at all opportunities that make sense,” he said. “We’re in a

very good position, based on the strength of the business, and our performance in the last year with our core business to be able to do that.”

“We’re open to all opportunities that make the process more efficient, and cost effective for our customer. We believe you don’t have to always do

things the way you always have, and that there’s opportunities to implement technology and build fit-for purpose equipment that could lead to totally different ways of doing things.”

“We’re separating out a certain portion of our business to be standalone, ► Page A9

• Fire Extinguisher Services / Sales / Rentals • Gas Detection Sales / Service / Rentals • Breathing Air Refills & Hydro Testing • Scba/Saba Air Equipment Sales / Service • Rentals • Fit Testing • Safety Air Trailers And Safety Personnel • Calibration Gases & Accessories Sales • New & Reconditioned Equipment • First Aid, Eyewash & Burn Kit Services • Signage

BREATHING APPARATUS New & Reconditioned *Pick up & Delivery available upon request.

(306) 634-4797 (306) 634-7334 www.cedagroup.com

TROYE CARSON PRESTON MAJERAN 306-421-3603 306-421-6609 tcarsonsafety@sasktel.net pmajeransafety@sasktel.net Hwy 361 West, South Yard, P.O. Box 518, Lampman, SK Main Office: (306) 487-1611

MS RS

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A9

These are for remediation, only ◄ Page A8 to be able to leverage the infrastructure we’ve already got in place, because we’ve got 11 service locations across Western Canada, but have them focused on remediation business, and not have them drug into the primary side of the business. Conventionally, people would share those resources, where you have a truck that will do both. We’re dedicating those resources to just the remediation, so it won’t be out on a drilling rig, when a guy calls at 6 o’clock to go to work tomorrow morning on a squeeze.”

To that end, a major part of the announcement was a splitting of the top executive duties. Murray Bickley will assume the role of president, effective immediately. Bickley will lead the execution of the company’s strategic initiatives, which include its expansion plan with the formation of the new dedicated remediation business line. Hooker remains as chief executive officer, leading the company’s growth strategy to maximize Sanjel Energy Services’ value for employees, clients and shareholders.

Hooker said, “Of our core business, which

is primarily cementing, and now of the remedial space, he’ll be day-to-day planning around how we keep that business healthy and moving forward. My role is going to be looking for other opportunities, outside of those, that can create value for our shareholders, and opportunities for our employees.”

That means looking for other opportunities, but “in our backyard.” The previous Sanjel entity had international operations, including in the United States and Russia, both of which where shed when the downturn hit, before the old Sanjel went down and this new entity was born.

“We’re going to look to add complimentary services to our core businesses, or things that run alongside, but don’t compromise. Our strategic plan isn’t to recreate a full service upstream pumping company. Not at all. It’s to look to add things to the existing business, whether that be through vertical integration of supply of materials or chemicals, or when we talk about this remediation services group, something that adds onto the cementing that we do there to create a better solution for our customer that’s more cost efficient,” Hooker said.

With regards to cementing pricing these days, Hooker said that compared to peak, it’s safe to say pricing is off 20 per cent. “It’s still a very competitive business. In our strategic plan, nowhere does it include getting back to pricing levels of old, because we just don’t think that’s the new reality. We think the current environment and cost pressures and efficiencies are going to be what they are, as things grind, I guess, upward, long term. There’s been a reset in this environment.

We’re embracing that and figuring out how we’re going to be successful with it,” he said.

The company is hiring, but by early December they were getting close to their headcount targets for this winter. “In our business, it’s always planning for Q1, which is the high activity period, and trying to anticipate what Q2 is going to bring and the rest of the year.”

They took a different path in the spring, called “green to competent.”

“We just looked for

ultants

ecialists

good guys who had able bodies and good attitudes but no experience. We had training programs in place to give them the tools they need for operational competency, as well as driving. That’s paid off, in that we’ve been able to reach our headcount targets, but the rate we’ve been able to grow them has been slower than anticipated,” Hooker said, adding, “We always have room for good people.”

They move equipment and people around Western Canada to “level load,” deploying those assets to places that are busy and moving them to other locations when an area slows down. Their locations are spaced to generally cover a twohour drive from each base.

Sanjel has locations in Swift Current, Kindersley, Lloydminster and Estevan in Saskatchewan.

New Estevan location In Estevan, this past year the company consolidated its longstanding two yards, one on the east side, and one on the north side of the city. As of Aug. 1, all operations are now on

the west side of the city, in the shop built for Kelly Lafrentz Trucking, and most recently occupied by Sonic Oilfield Services.

“That move sort of speaks to the business in the last year-and-a-half.

In the early days, it was about keeping wheels rolling, and currently, we’re finding and looking to optimize our operations. Having two shops in the same town, and trying to manage assets across town, wasn’t the best way to run our business. We were fortunate to find the location that we did, that would work well for us to consolidate our operation and run a good business out of Estevan,” Hooker said.

In Estevan they have 34 people working. It will have its own remedial division, with different trucks, different people dedicated to it.

Asked how things are going, and looking towards 2018, he said, “The landscape is fresh, and we are embracing those realities in the way we are running our business. It’s a continuous

grind. There’s pressure everyday around costs versus revenue, not unlike everyone else in the service side right now. And our customers’ side, you know, commodities have not been strong for them over the last number of years, which has resulted in pressure over the last number of years.

“We’re focusing on people, rewarding them as much as we can, with a long-term view that things are going to turn around, and trying to do a good job in the field and exhibit a service attitude.”

With regards to the rates they can charge, he noted they are widespread across the basin and have a good measure of where the market is in terms of pricing acceptance. “There’s still a lot of competition in the space. Pricing is not one thing we’re anticipating changing greatly over the next year. We’re going to continue to be faced with the competitive environment we’re in, and relying on efficiency and utilization in order to generate earnings.”

JACK!

IT’S ABOUT TIME

ng

CUSTOMS BROKERS

nal Small e Forwarders & Consultants Custom Clearance Specialists EDI Networking Check out our International Small Package Service DAILY DELIVERIES INTO ESTEVAN

S INTO HEAD OFFICE

North Portal (306) 927- 2165 Estevan (306) 634- 5454

Regina ................... (306) 352-2662 Saskatoon..............(306) 244-4847 Regway....................(306) 969-2126

Nationwide Services

www.percydavis.com Email: info@percydavis.com

Jack knows time is money PAYS FOR ITSELF

INSTALLATION

YOUR TIME

The increase in oil/gas production is immediately measureable not only in time, but real dollars.

It only takes a few hours to have your compressor up and running, practically eliminating production downtime.

Our safety qualified installers will perform maintenance checks when required, onsite, saving you the trip in.

– 4 WEEKS

– ZERO

– 1 DAY

www.annugas.com Toll Free

1.866.ANNUGAS

COMPRESSION

CONSULTING

LTD.

ANNUGAS ANNUGAS PRODUCTION PRODUCTION ENHANCER ENHANCER ®

A10

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

What’s old is new again for KRJ and Pongo Holdings Estevan – On the very far east side of Estevan’s industrial parks in the RM of Estevan, lies the KRJ Industrial Park, now home to Lavoie Mobile Cleaning, Captive Oilfield Rentals, Stampede Drilling, AECOM, part of Turnbull Redimix and KRJ Custom Fabricating Ltd, itself. In the past year, there’s been some shuffling, as KRJ, and its sister company, Pongo Holdings, are back where they started in the industrial park, in the southeast corner.

Ken Mehler, partner in the outfit, explained that the industrial park was built 11 years ago. The shop in the southeast corner was built first, about 10 years ago. This was right when the Bakken boom hit the region.

Halliburton, one

of the largest oilfield services companies in the world, was eager to return to Estevan. They came knocking.

“They wanted a shop, ASAP (as soon as possible),” Mehler recalled, and they didn’t want to wait. With a 10-year lease in hand, KRJ auctioned off their equipment, gave up their own shop, and started building a new shop, next door, to the north. They bought all new equipment and started up again, continuing in the fabrication business.

In 2010, ATCO set up a camp to the north of the new KRJ shop, which they kept for five years.

That took up another five acres. The camp remained, empty, for another 1.5 years before it was sold off and much of it removed.

Halliburton stayed for

KRJ and Pongo Holdings are back in their original shop, foreground, after giving up their previous location, left, to AECOM. Photo by Brian Zinchuk.

8.5 years, but was empty for about two years, having decamped for Regina before eventually shutting down operations in the Queen City not long after.

They paid off their lease in Estevan.

That led to AECOM, in this past year, looking for additional shop space in Estevan, as it

consolidated operations in the Energy City, moving out of Lampman, where predecessor company, Carson Energy Services, was based.

“AECOM was looking for a shop, so we rented the second one to them, and we moved back here” Mehler said. That happened in July.

KRJ is still building its specialty toolboxes and doing repairs, he said, working with local coal mines and SaskPower.

Pongo Holdings’ frac water business has been slow.

Mehler said, “The word is surviving. That’s about it.”

The two companies have eight people working

for them now, down from 11 in 2014.

“Our saving grace has been the mines. They’ve been good to us,” he added, noting 30 years of history working with the local mines.

These days they get very few resumes anymore. “There’s nobody left,” Mehler said.

Grey Cup Champion and perennial all-star.

“Dan has become an expert in the fundamentals of leadership and habit change, sharing his knowledge and experi-

ences with companies throughout North America.

“Dan will discuss workplace safety and how ‘Everything Matters.’”

IWS Safety Stand Down coming Jan. 10 Estevan – Independent Well Servicing Ltd. is holding their 3rd Annual Safety Stand Down on Jan. 10 at Southeast College’s Estevan campus.

The invitationonly event has become a significant one for the local service rig industry, as Crescent Point Energy Corp., which is a sponsor of the event, invites all its

service rigs to take part in it. Last year’s event packed the auditorium at the Estevan campus.

According to Independent Well Servicing’s Brian Crossman, one of

the organizers, the guest speaker will be Dan Comiskey. His biography reads, “Dan played in the Canadian Football League (CFL) for 13 years, and is a two time

Order your wholesale aftermarket engine parts from the comfort of your home.

Overnight shipping to • • • • •

Calgary Edmonton Saskatoon Regina Winnipeg, and others within the area.

We have over 20 years of experience using all these products ourselves within our sister company. After using various aftermarket and OEM products we have narrowed our selection down to nothing but the best product for each model of engine. We have developed partnerships with the manufacturers so we can deal direct, skip the middleman and pass on the best wholesale prices to our customers.

Our experienced partsman will verify your order is correct with the information you supply and often recommend other options you may require to complete your repair.

www.enginepartscanada.ca

1-844-433-3644

enginepartscanada@gmail.com

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

A11

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

Bert Baxter Transport toughed it out through the downturn

By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – They closed two divisions, put trucks on long-haul, reduced hours and curtailed construction of their new facilities, doing whatever it takes to make it through the downturn that is well over three years old. Through it all, Estevan-based Bert Baxter Transport survived, and this past year marked 60 years in business.

These days the company is run by the three Shirley brothers, Todd, Darryl, also known as “Buzz,” and Vaughn. Todd acts as general manager, Darryl is the service manager, and Vaughn long ago took over operations at their Edmonton area base, at Leduc. Darryl and Todd spoke to Pipeline News on Dec. 12.

These days Bert Baxter is running about 65 units, including eight pickers. At peak, they had 110 units on the road.

“They’re parked,

ready to go to work.

We’ve got a pile of them sitting, all ready to licence up. We sold a couple of trucks, but nothing major,” said Darryl.

Darryl noted they’ve started to get rid of some of the real old stuff.

Fort Nelson, B.C. and Grande Prairie, Alta. locations were shut down in 2016. They had been opened in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Those northern divisions did general oilfield hauling, including moving drilling rigs. That last item is something they don’t do in southern Saskatchewan Overnight freight A key part of the business, for much of its existence, has been the company’s overnight freight run. “Our freight run runs every night through the week.

It doesn’t run Saturday or Sunday,” he said. “It’s constantly two (trucks) but up to five a night.”

It’s flatdeck, general

Thank you

freight from Edmonton and area for all sorts of companies in southeast Saskatchewan. “We do anything that’s used in the oilpatch. Freight of any sort,” Darryl said. “If you can think of it, it’s been there.

“Nobody else offers a freight run like the nighttime service.”

They run all over the Edmonton area, with several workers collecting freight, not only in Edmonton, but Calgary and Red Deer. It usually leaves Leduc around 8 to 9 p.m. A matching set of trucks leaves Estevan around the same time, and they meet in Saskatoon or Radisson and switch trailers, with each truck heading back home after trading trailers.

Certain full-truck loads, however, go the whole distance without switching. They usually have freight going both ways, but a lot more comes from Alberta than going

the other way. Usually they know a day before how much volume they will have.

“If we have a tank that takes a special trailer and special truck, we’ll go the whole way,” said Darryl.

“Our long-haul division runs all 48 states,” said Todd, who noted Vaughn usually looks after that. They have 12 to 15 trucks running through all the U.S., with a lot in Texas.

“We’ve hauled everything from fully-erect satellite dishes to watermelon on our trucks,” Darryl said. “The most bizarre stuff, that I shake my head at, that we’ll we’ve hauled: we’ll haul a load of used oilfield tubing from Estevan to Texas, drop it off, go to a different site, and pick up a whole load of used oilfield tubing and haul it back to Estevan, from Texas.”

The highway division

Congrats on 60 Years!

Darryl “Buzz” Shirley, left, and Todd Shirley run the Estevan operations of Bert Baxter Transport Ltd., while their brother, Vaughn, (not pictured) runs the Leduc office. Photo by Brian Zinchuk uniform, for the most part. “I would say 90 per cent of ours is Kenworth,” Todd said.

Darryl added, “We like the product.” ► Page A12

will haul anything, but a lot of it is oilfield-related.

It’s all flatdeck. That division is dispatched out of Leduc.

Maintenance division Their fleet is pretty

Congratulations to all Family Members and Staff of Bert Baxter Transport on 60 Years of Service

To our customers for your loyal support.

It is our honour to work with you.

To our employees for your dedication.

Here's to 60 more years.

306-634-3616

www.bbaxtertransport.ca

» Oilfield Construction » Roadway Construction » Major Excavations » Aggregate Productions » Site Development

• Farm Tires & Service • Pickup & SUV Tires • Car & Minivan Tires • Commercial Truck Tires • Automotive Maintenance & Repairs

306.577.1883 • Arcola, SK

ESTEVAN MOTORS

Congratulations Congratulations 60 years!

306.634.4493 • Estevan, SK

Great Products....Great Service

Our Sales Team is dedicated to your satisfaction

Bert Baxter Transport.

Thank you for your support over the years, it is our pleasure to serve you.

1217 4th Street • Estevan, SK Toll Free (888) 936-2222

Family Owned Since 1937 SALES | SERVICE | FLEET | AUTOBODY | PARTS

to Bert Baxter Transport of

Free Written Estimates All Work Guaranteed Honest & Professional Service

101 4th Street • 306-634-3637• fountaintire.com

EXPERT SERVICE & REPAIR | AUTOBODY SERVICE QUALITY PRE-OWNED CARS & TRUCKS | RV PARTS

301 Kensington Ave., Estevan, SK

No matter what you drive, We have a solution for you!

Congratulations to all the Family and Staff Members at

Bert Baxter Transport on your

60 Years of Dedication CORNER OF 4TH & SOURIS

306-634-3629 • ESTEVANMOTORS.COM Weekdays 8am - 5:30pm | Saturdays 9am - 3pm

A12

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

Maintenance is nearly all done in-house by dedicated team ◄ Page A11 The maintenance division, which includes welding, mechanical, autobody and painting, is Darryl’s domain, with two shops sandwiched on joined lots between Devonian Street and Mississippian Drive, on Estevan’s east side.

They have about 18 people in the maintenance division, including two mechanics in Leduc and a welding group in Estevan.

The welding shop is Canadian Welding Bureau-certified, as are its welders. With an affiliated engineering firm

they retain, they are able to weld structural steel.

An example is several spreader bars of their own manufacture, sitting near the welding shop. “We do everything. We will rebuild engines, transmissions, differentials, totally rebuild a truck, if need be. We do tires, brakes, all maintenance. In the fab shop, we’ll take a trailer right down to the frame, and put all new cross members in and rebuild a whole trailer.

Sandblast it, and basically give it a birthday, taking a 10-year-old trailer back up to brand-new spec.”

“We do 98 per cent

Congratulations on

60 years in business!

Sc Schilling g 80 King Street, E., Estevan, SK

306-634-3689

of the maintenance inhouse. It is impossible to do it all in-house,” Darryl said. Emissions controls, in particular need to be done by the dealer.

The company has pretty much always had an in-house maintenance capability, going back to when the Shirley family bought the business. Darryl came on 30 years ago, and has his red seal journeyman ticket in truck and transport repair.

Todd has is A-ticket on cranes as a picker operator.

“Most of our iron has gone through the shop and is ready to go to work,” Darryl said.

When the downturn hit hard, the company, like most others, found itself parking units that

required expensive repairs, pulling their plates until things picked up. A bit of that is still going on now. Darryl noted they have two trucks with blown engines that aren’t going to see money invested until they need it. “For the most part, if it wasn’t too bad, once it got slow in the shop, to keep my guys busy, OK, I’ll spend the money on this truck and we went through it slowly.”

“You control your costs and spread it out.

When it’s busy, you just basically get it done, whatever it costs. It was a make-work project, to keep guys going.”

Their maintenance staff nearly all have their journeyperson certificates.

Tyson Wilhelm torches bolts off a fuel tank, working in the maintenance shop for Bert Baxter Transport. Photo

by Brian Zinchuk Pipe custodians For decades, Bert Baxter Transport has acted as pipe custodians, storing pipe for multiple oil companies and pipe companies. It’s the entire reason the company had

60 Years in Business!

Congratulations to everyone at

Bert Baxter Transport!

Congratulations

Bert Baxter Transport on your th

60 Anniversary!

Senchuk

118 Souris Ave. N., Estevan 306-634-3696 www.senchukford.com

Ford Sales Ltd.

s n o i t a l u t a r Cong Bert Baxter Transport on

Congratulations on your 60 Year Anniversary!

numerous pipe yards around Estevan, filled with casing and tubing.

“We store for multiple companies, and rack it in for quite a few of them,” Darryl said.

“We keep their stock for them.”

The inventory is way down right now, as companies have tried to use up what they had.

Some new pipe is coming in, but it’s not at all like it was when things were busy. Not a lot of pipe comes in from the Canadian Pacific line in Estevan, but some comes in to CN’s Bienfait terminal. Most is by truck.

They haul most of the pipe in their yard, but not exclusively.

Handling pipe is maybe 20 per cent of their business now, but when it was really rocking, Darryl said that number was more like 50 per cent. ► Page A13

Congratulations Bert Baxter Transport on your

60 Anniversary! th

Hwy 361 West • South Yard P.O. Box 518 • Lampman, SK S0C 1N0

Main Office: (306) 487-1611

60 YEARS!

306-634-9888

Congratulations on 60 Years of Dedication and Service

King Street East, Estevan

306-634-3783

CERVUS EQUIPMENT PETERBILT 306-636-6320 • CERVUSEQUIPMENT.COM/PETERBILT • Monday-Friday 7:30am - 6pm • Saturday 8 - Noon PARTS ONLY

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

A13

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

New yard consolidated several scattered yards ◄ Page A12 New yard In what’s turned into a much longer project than initially planned, Bert Baxter Transport began several years ago to move its operation out of Estevan and into the RM of Estevan, with a new

yard adjacent to the truck bypass that was still, at that time, in the planning stages. The site is inside the northeast corner of the bypass, which was completed two years ago.

The initial plan was to move everything out there, consolidating numer-

Mechanic Bill Yeates works on a light duty truck in Bert Baxter Transport’s maintenance division.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk

ous pipe yards into one, relocate their maintenance and headquarters out there so that all operations are on one site. Five new buildings were planned.

Dirt work started in the flood year, 2011, which was challenging, to say the least.

“We tried to pump sloughs. We got a D9 stuck out there, buried right to the cab. It was a frustrating year,” Darryl said. Kelly Panteluk Construction Ltd. did all the dirt work.

“We just call it the new yard. We wanted that for years, to get out of town to alleviate city tax, and running around,” Todd said.

They used to operate seven pipe yards in town. The new pipe yard, which became operational over 2014 and 2015, is 60 acres in size. All the pipe yards in town are now empty, and for sale, as is the main office and its lot.

The Shirleys are waiting for the market to improve, and the right offers, before they sell.

They have 20 additional acres at the new

yard for storage of older material, a big pile of topsoil.

“We did develop another 14 lots on the other 70 acres,” Darryl said.

“We’ve got 14, five-acre lots and a road.”

There’s power, gas and telephone utilities to the edge of each lot.

They kept two lots.

Two lots were sold to CJCSM Inspection, which built an automated pipe inspection plant.

They’ve moved one building out there, and built three. The downturn put a major crimp in their timeline and plans.

It’s still in the plans to relocate the repair shops and headquarters.

“Because of the downturn, that’s been put on the backburner,” Darryl said. “We’ve got to build a couple buildings, but we’re not going to spend the money until the oilpatch turns up.

The main office, including dispatch might end up out there sooner than later, but in a much more sedated manner than initially planned. “We’re not staying stagnant on

WE’VE GOT YOU COVERED

ANNER BIT SERVICE

Congrats

Bert Baxter Transport on 60 Years of Service SURFACE BIT RENTAL QUALITY RERUN & RETIP 24 HR SERVICE CELL: 306-421-3726 OFFICE: 306-388-2941

CHAD FROESE

FROM NUTS & BOLTS TO TOOLS FOR ANY JOB

CONGRATULATIONS Bert Baxter Transport on 60 years!

Wayne Stubel, in the loader, manipulates pipe in the new yard, northeast of Estevan, adjacent to the truck bypass. Photo by Brian Zinchuk that,” Darryl said.

“The next thing will be the office, and then the maintenance shop, but it won’t be the big office we planned on doing,” Darryl said.

“If it gets going the right direction, it might start again,” Todd said.

Darryl noted there’s still not a lot of confidence in the oilpatch yet. “We’re not sitting back and being complacent. We’re prepared. I’ve got a whole

bunch of trucks we’ve gone through it would take a day, two days to licence them and we could have six, seven trucks ready in a week.”

That includes four pickers, ready to go.

Contending with downturn Bert Baxter tried the federal job sharing program, but it didn’t last very long. “We just modified the schedule. When it was ► Page A14

Congratulations

to the h whole h l team at Bert Baxter Transport on 60 years in business!

Southern Bolt Supply & Tools Ltd. We’re Nuts About Bolts

410-5th Avenue, Estevan, SK 306-634-5778 | soubol@sasktel.net

Congratulations

to the Shirley family and everyone at Bert Baxter Transport on your

60 Anniversary! th

Lance Mack & Yansey Hagel 1010 6th Street, Estevan 306-634-6060

On behalf of our entire staff

Congratulations

A14

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

Long haul division sustained them during the worst of the downturn ◄ Page A13 really slow, we modified our hours.”

They had one round of layoffs. Some people left, but it wasn’t a lot. “We kept most of our staff,” Todd said.

“Our long haul division helped a lot to sustain us through the worst,” Todd said. “Our freight run went down to one truck for a while.”

Darryl said, “This area

really hasn’t been great guns since 2011, since the flood.”

He noted that for three years, the very southeast corner, along the Manitoba border, had lots of rain, and there was a lot of mud.

Todd said, “Right from 2011 to 2014, we were good, then when it crashed, it was like someone turned off a light switch off. They shut us

Wayne Stubel unloads a trailer of new pipe that came into Bert Baxter Transport’s new yard.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk

down in a heartbeat. And then they fired up in a heartbeat, without warning.

“The oilpatch will never change. It will always be that way.”

Darryl has heard of rig hands who are working in the fast food who would rather stay there than go back to work on a few wells.

He said, with things picking up from the slowdown, companies are having a hard time finding qualified people.

“People are not coming back. They’re done with this up and down roller-coaster. They want a stable job, with a stable paycheck. There are a lot of job openings that can’t be filled by qualified people.”

Bert Baxter isn’t hiring until the New Year.

Todd thinks they’re going to be, but he’s waiting to see what happens.

Darryl is concerned about the trucking industry’s aging workforce, and the implications down the

Bert Baxter Transport on 60 years in business!

1115 5th Street Estevan, SK

306-634-3664

autoelectricservice.com

Dalton Shirley rips out floorboards of a trailer that will be rebuilt.

As a Canadian Welding Bureau-certified shop, they can rebuilt trailers to like new.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk road. Todd noted how the sporadic nature of work in the oilpatch makes it difficult to attract a younger crowd.

Employees “We’ve got a really good bunch of employees,” Todd said. Nearly all their employees are long-term, having been with the company for years.

Most of their picker

operators are A-ticketed, and the remainder are Bticketed.

Gotta be riding The Shirley brothers look like bikers that run a trucking company, because, well, they are bikers that run a trucking company. Each of the three brothers have a number of Harley Davidsons. Like potato chips, you can’t

have just one.

“In the last five years, my brothers and I have gone on quite a few bike trips together,” Darryl said.

“Gotta be riding,” Todd said.

As for the future, Todd said he doesn’t have a crystal ball.

Darryl said, “We plan on being around here for many more years.”

Happy 60 Years!

Congratulations

to the Shirley family on 60 years of incredible service to the oilfield industry

559 McDonald Street, Regina, SK | 306-721-7211 | www.westrans.com

Estevan - 306.634.4041

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

A15

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

Bert Baxter Transport has been making miles for 60 years

By Brian Zinchuk Estevan – Bert Baxter Transport Ltd. has been in operation for 60 years this past year, and most of that time it has been under the ownership and operation of Graham and Nancy Shirley. The couple spend most of the winter months down south in Arizona these days, having gradually stepped back as their three sons, Todd, Darryl (“Buzz”) and Vaughn took over operating the company.

Pipeline News spoke to Nancy and Graham on Nov. 10, before they headed south. The two often finish each other’s sentences.

Bert Baxter Transport was incorporated in April of 1957.

Bert Baxter, the founder of the company, started in trucking in the late 1920s with a single truck. He worked on the Alaska Highway during the 1940s. He established

a gravel pit near Saskatoon, was a bulk fuel agent in Southey for four years, and ended up in Regina and Swift Current. The Baxters and their son, Donald, came to Estevan in 1956 with the birth of the Saskatchewan oilpatch.

Bert and his wife, Helen, only intended on staying five years, according to a 1986 article in Pipeline, a predecessor to this publication. Helen was a full partner in the business, he said.

The company’s business also included hauling oil, coal, and moving furniture. (See the full story on pipelinenews.ca) For the Shirleys, their start in the oil business came around the same time.

Graham said, “I was down here in 1952, working on the rigs. Bert was in business in Swift Current.

He moved here in 1953.”

He started working on the rigs near his home,

at Frontier. Nancy and Graham grew up eight miles apart. “She trapped me,” Graham quipped.

Graham’s family rented some farmland and had some dairy cattle and horses, then them moved into town. Nancy grew up on a wheat farm south of Climax.

He started working on the rigs when he was too young. The toolpush found out, and he only worked one day. Three months later he lied about his age, telling the push on another rig that he was 18 when he was actually 16. He was hired. In 1953, he moved from Frontier, when his rig started drilling at Tilston, Man., before the rig moved back to Consul, Sask.

“A well they are doing today in four days, max, took us 2.5 weeks, on those shallow wells,” he said.

Graham was working derrick on Common-

weath Drilling Rig 6 in the southeast in 1955-56.

“You could look around the country and see 60 rigs, in the Steelman area,” he said.

In 1956 after an injury Graham returned to Frontier and began driving truck with N.E. Stenson Transport, hauling crude oil and pipe in southwest Saskatchewan in the Rapdan field at Dollard. They also hauled scrap metal from various points on Saskatchewan and the northern United States. “When working for Stenson, Graham hauled the second load of scrap into IPSCO,” Nancy said.

He was beat out by the boss’ son, because his truck had more horsepower than Graham’s.

Graham and Nancy met on a blind date in 1957 when Nancy was 16. They were married in 1960. She was 19, he was 24. Nancy attended teachers’ college in Moose Jaw

Nancy and Graham Shirley took over Bert Baxter Trucking in 1977. They are now retired.

Photo by Brian Zinchuk at age 18, with an engagement ring on her finger.

She was a teacher until she started having kids, and she never got back to it. She taught one year in Scotsguard, and two years in Frontier.

Vaughn was born in 1963. Darryl was born in 1965, and Todd in 1966.

They moved to Estevan in 1964. He came during roadban time, having

quit his job with Stenson.

His brother, Murrough, worked in Estevan for Oilwell Supply, and his sister, Marion, and brother-inlaw, Ron Davis, lived in Oxbow, where Ron pushed tools for Commonwealth Drilling. Graham had been planning on looking for work in Alberta, when they suggested he look for work around Estevan. ► Page A16

Congratulations to the Shirley family on this accomplishment.

Happy 60 years in Business.

As a Proud Supplier to Bert Baxter Transport, we want to congratulate the Shirley family & the team at Bert Baxter Transport on 60 years in business!

From your friends at Custom Truck Sales!

Carnduff, Sk. 306-482-3244

A16

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

Be here at 7, you're going to work for me ◄ Page A15 So he went to a few trucking companies, and no one would hire him.

Graham said, “I went down to Baxter’s, because I knew Bert and Don Baxter. They said, ‘What are you doing down here?’ ” He replied he was going to look for a job in Alberta.

“You mean you’re not working?” Bert said.

“No,” was the reply.

“Be here Apr. 1, 7 o’clock, and you’re going to start working for me.”

Initially Graham still planned on going to Alberta. He found a place for them to live in a basement suite, so he returned to Frontier for Nancy and baby. Bert allowed him to use a company moving

van for the cost of the fuel.

When he got back with the loaded van, Bert sent him to work and had other workers unload the moving van for him.

Nancy pointed out Bert hired Graham during road ban, when most people aren’t hiring. Bert Baxter Transport was running seven trucks at the time, hauling oilfield equipment, just like the company does now. Moving pipe, and setting pumpjacks with gin-pole trucks was common work. They hauled mud from a warehouse in an old hangar at the old airport, south of Estevan.

“We loaded mud by hand, no forklifts, and unloaded it by hand at the rig,” Graham said.

Pipe was rolled onto

Congratulations

the semi by hand, not loaded by picker. “Three guys, rolling 8-5/8-inch casing up 2x6 planks, by hand,” Graham said. Sometimes they would use a rope tied to the hitch on an Oldsmobile to pull it up.

“Can you imagine what OH&S would do?”

Nancy laughed.

“They’d throw you in jail!” Graham replied.

He recalled unloading 25 rail cars of pipe with just two guys, picking up tubing and hand-bombing it onto the trucks. A long string would take five single-axle trailer trucks, and earn $9 per hour for the truck, trailer and driver. “I got $1.25 per hour when I came out here. After three months, I got a ten cent raise and thought I was richer than

hell!” Graham said.

“It wasn’t a big wage, but in ’65, we were able to buy a brand new Meteor,” he said.

Nancy noted his nickname was “Speed.”

Freight run “Edmonton is the supply depot of the oilpatch.

Calgary is the head offices, Edmonton is the supplies,” Nancy said.

Graham said, “The white collar workers are in Calgary, the blue collar workers are in Edmonton.”

“Back in 1964, there were six of us. Bert called us in the office one day. He said we were going to start a freight run, to Edmonton. I was the low man on the totem pole. I had just started. He asked who wants to do it? There were

Congratulations to Everyone at Bert Baxter Transport

BERT BAXTER TRANSPORT

"We Dispatch For The Oil Patch" · Two Way Radios · Alarm Monitoring · Safety Checks

60OFYEARS SERVICE DEAN SAWYER • LORI SAWYER

306-421-1533 • dean@sawyersafety.ca

706 - 5th Street 306-634-3522 24 Hour Service - 7 Days A Week!

Congratulations

TO BERT BAXTER TRANSPORT

A family owned and operated business committed to safety and to providing you with quality products.

Congratulations

ON 60 YEARS OF SERVICE 510 Maplewind Rd, Stoughton, SK S0G 4T0

(306) 457-3131

Congratulations

ON 60 YEARS IN BUSINESS!

six of us there. They said, ‘I don’t want it. You can’t make no damned money at it. It’s too many hours. Do this, do that.’

“So he said, ‘Graham, do you want it?’

“I said, “You damned right.’ So I ran Edmonton for 10 years for him.”

That meant often two to 2 1/2 trips per week.

“I always felt I was lucky. Gals who had toolpushes for husbands, never saw their husband to the end of the hole they were on. At least I got to see my husband twice a week, Wednesday night and Saturday night,” Nancy said.

“One year, I put in more hours overtime then straight time.”

He did a lot of local work, too, whenever he was

home. There wasn’t a lot of sleep in those days.

The Edmonton run has been a cornerstone of Bert Baxter Transport’s business ever since 1964.

Supervisor, then owner In 1974, Bert pulled Graham off the road and offered him a good deal to come into the office as a supervisor and dispatcher.

“His son, Don was there for a while. Then in ’77, Bert and his son both wanted to retire. He said that to me and Elmer Vicary, who was on the police force, so we formed a partnership and bought Bert and Helen out in October of 1977. Nancy was hired as office manager, receptionist, bookkeeper, payroll clerk, whatever,” Graham said. ► Page A17

Congratulations on 60 Years!

311 Kensington Avenue, Estevan

306-634-3661

www.murrayestevan.com

BERT BAXTER TRANSPORT

Congratulations th on your 60 Year Anniversary!

Estevan 634-3601 www.mccombautomotive.com

Estevan, SK | 3 306-634-6494 06 634 4 6494

Congratulations

Congratulations

Bert Baxter Transport on your 60 Years of Service

To the Shirley Family and the Bert Baxter Team for 60 years in business!

Jim, Crystal and the Wil-Tech team.

Bert Baxter Transport on 60 YEARS!

PERCY H. DAVIS LTD. CUSTOMS BROKERS

www.wil-tech.ca

306.634.6743

Lampman, SK • 306-487-2525

Email: mark@percydavis.com Phone: 306-634-5454 • Fax: 306-927-2271

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

A17

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

Well, she's all yours, said Bert Baxter ◄ Page A16 Nancy said, “Mr. B. gave me training in doing the books, for about three days. The next morning, he came in and said, ‘Well, she’s all yours.’ He had a deck of cards in his hand, he went to the seniors centre and that’s where he stayed.

“Elmer remained on the police force for a while and then he became too busy and found it difficult to handle both jobs. ” Graham said.

Nancy becomes a partner Nancy said, “In 1981, I bought Elmer out. He wanted to go back to the police force, so I bought him out and continued to work. I had taken some courses on bookkeeping.

Bert was 65 and decided that’s it, I’m retiring.

“I did a lot of extra things in addition to the office work. I didn’t go out and drive truck, but I counted a lot of pipe in my life, dispatching and even went out and did deliveries with a small truck on a few occasions.

She was an early adopter of using computers, keeping track of pipe

digitally on an old Radio Shack Model 4 computer (a TRS-80). Graham’s first cellphone was what he called a “log phone,” one of the earliest cellphones. An early pager was heaven.

“Graham has a fantastic memory. He knew everything about that pipe out there, and how many joints had gone to this rig, and how much had come back. I wanted some way of keeping track. It was Bill Roach who clued me in, saying, ‘You should have a computer!’”

They got on with a company in Saskatoon, Axon Development Corporation, that created an integrated package for truckers. It was founded by two truckers’ sons. “They did an excellent job, and that’s what we’re running today,” she said. “We’re now hosted in Regina, with our servers with SaskTel.” Every invoice and manifest, going back decades, can be pulled up with this software, she said.

Expansion in the 80s In the 1980s, they set up a shop in Melita, Man. which they had about five years. They got their first big

L&C Trucking 306.634.7341 Service Since 1956

his picker ticket.

“We needed someone to be up in Edmonton, and (Vaughn) was the one we asked to go,” Nancy said.

“He’s been up there 29 years now,” Graham said.

Originally in Edmonton, the operation was moved to Leduc eight years ago, where they built a building on five acres of land.

Todd runs the overall operation, and Darryl runs the maintenance division.

“When push comes to shove, they fight together,” Graham said.

Consolidation Over more than three decades, the company ended up with seven pipe yards throughout Estevan.

“Can you imagine running forklifts all around?”

Nancy asked.

When they bought the company, Bert had three yards which he eventually sold to them. One yard they had to buy in a hurry, in the middle of January.

Being spread out, and

Happy 60 Anniversary, th

Bert Baxter Transport!

Bert Baxter Transport on your milestone of 60 Years in Business!

lctrucking.ca

24 HWY 39 E • Estevan, SK gm@lctrucking.ca

306-634-5555

www.skyliftservices.com

Providing Oilfield Services - Since 1956

Congrats on your Celebration of 60 Years!

CONGRATULATIONS

Shirley Family on 60 Years of Service

Leading Suppliers to:

SUPPLY LTD.

Automotive, Oil and Gas, Mining, Power Generation, Construction and Agriculture Industries

6th Street, Estevan • 306-634-2312 • Superior Service - Superior Product Knowledge

Congratulations

IN BUSINESS

306-634-9707

Email: bobs.electric@sasktel.net Box 698, 81 Escana St., Estevan, S4A 2A6

Congratulations

to the SHIRLEY Family & Bert Baxter Transport on

60 YEARS Quality Controlled - Safety Co-ordinated

that’s been in business for 60 years, the Shirley family has seen all the ups and downs. But this most recent downturn, which hit in the second half of 2014, has been the worst.

It saw Bert Baxter Transport’s shops that were established in Fort Nelson, B.C. and Grande Prairie, Alta., shut down.

Nancy and Graham say this downturn has been worse than the one in 1986, and even worse than 1972, when the then-NDP government brought in Bill 42 which almost completely shut down the Saskatch► Page A18

on your 60 Anniversary!

Congratulations Oxbow (306) 483-2848 Pipestone (204) 854-2231 Waskada (204) 673-2284 Halbrite (306) 458-2344

with their main office on a busy street, led to its share of headaches. “It’s always been a problem. Getting out onto Kensington Avenue, with the traffic, has been a problem,” Nancy said.

By 2010, the first moves were made to consolidate all that into one yard, northeast of the city, adjacent to the then-upcoming truck bypass. Dirt started moving in 2011, but the oil downturn has slowed that project down tremendously. (See related story, Page A11) Downturn Running a company

BERT BAXTER TRANSPORT th

Congrats

24 HR

Personalized Service

picker, a 15-tonne, around 1981. There was a lot of activity in nearby Waskada, Man. But that area slowed down, and that operation was closed. They moved the building to Estevan.

That was also the decade the boys started becoming part of the business. “They all started out as swampers,” Graham said.

“They all started when they were young. Vaughn went away for a couple years and took a business course in Regina, which he didn’t like. But he was driving when he was home on the weekend. They got their chauffeur’s licence when they were 18, all of them,” Nancy said, referring to Class 1A licences.

Todd took his driver’s test with a long string loaded on the truck, and then drove it straight to the rig. “He got to the rig on time, with the pipe,” Nancy said.

Darryl apprenticed under a mechanic who worked at the mines and Bert Baxter Transport. Todd got

on this milestone.

Here's to 60 more!

Sales & Service For: PUMPS / METERS / VALVES / CONTROLS / SWITCHES

Estevan, Saskatchewan 321 Imperial Avenue Tel: 306-634-5304 Virden, Manitoba • 130 Anson Road Tel: 204-748-3704

306-634-8473 9 Lamaro Street Estevan

306-634-7903 237 Third Street Estevan

A18

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

60

60 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

YEARS YEARS

Last 3.5 years the toughest, after 10 good years ◄ Page A17 ewan oilpatch. However, in 1972, they weren’t owners.

“The toughest has been the last 3 1/2 years.

We had 10 good years before that,” Graham said.

It was tough in 1998, and really bad in 1986.

In 1986 they took

their first holiday down to Mesa, Az., in February. “When we left, it was busy. When we got back, you could have fired a cannon down Fourth Street and not hit a hair on anybody,” Graham said.

“It wasn’t easy,” Graham said, when asked

how they survived.

Nancy said laying people off is really, really hard.

“Everyone you lay off is one you can’t get back, and some damned good people.”

Nancy and Graham have pretty much fully stepped back from the

business now, a gradual process that started 22 years ago, when they started going south for longer and longer periods in the winter. “We’re just consultants. I call myself senior consultant now,” Nancy giggled.

“I go down and raise a little hell once in

a while, but they don’t pay attention anymore,” Graham said.

“It’s like baking a

cake. You can’t go in and mess up the recipe. You need to back off, and we have,” Nancy said.

Graham Shirley used to drive for Stenson Transport before he joined Bert Baxter Transport. Photo courtesy Bert Baxter Transport

Congratulations to Bert Baxter Transport

Terry L. Germain REALTOR®

306.421.2021 306

TL60.GERMAIN@GMAIL.COM TL60.GER

SERVING SE SASK FOR OVER 27 YEARS.

CHOICE REAL ESTATE

Each office independently owned and operated

Complete Rod Pumping Design, Supply, Optimization & Field Services • Specializing in Rod Pumping System Design—Directional, Horizontal & Vertical • Proud Supplier of TENARIS Steel & SUPEROD Fiberglass Sucker Rods

• Offering the PENTADRIVE VFD, GE Well Manager & XSPOC SCADA Hosting • Complete Dynamometer & Fluid Level Services including Optimization Proposals

Penta Completions Supply & Services Phone: (306) 634-7399 • Fax: (306) 634-6989 E-Mail: sales@pentarods.com 58 Devonian Street • Estevan, Saskatchewan S4A 2A6

Area Manager Timothy Plemel 1-306-421-6770 • tplemel@pentarods.com

www.pentarods.com

A DIVISION OF JJ TRUCKING LTD.

COR certified ê Gravel Hauling ê All Types of Aggregate including Pipeline Sand ê Sealed Trailers for Hauling Contaminated Waste ê Environmental Clean Ups ê Grading ê Directional Drilling ê Heavy Equipment Hauling ê Excavating ê Lease Preparation and Reclamation

Dispatch: (306) 421-9295 Chris Johnston: (306) 621-6002 • Shop: (306) 433-2059 Office/Fax: (306) 433-2069 • Toll Free: 1-888-532-5526 Creelman, SK • ldallan.jjtrucking@outlook.com

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A19

Questerre picks up oil production in Antler area, east of Redvers COMPANY IS ONE OF THE FEW WILLING TO TRY TO DEVELOP NATURAL GAS IN QUEBEC Calgary – Questerre Energy Corporation said on Nov. 27 that it has closed an acquisition of producing Bakken/Torquay oil assets in the Antler area of southeast Saskatchewan. Questerre acquired approximately 180 bpd of light oil production in the Antler area for gross consideration of $7.25 million, subject to customary industry adjustments. Acquired assets include 3D seismic data over the producing acreage with a value of approximately $770,000.

That made it a good time to call up Michael Binnion, president and CEO of the company that has had the tenacity to try to start an oilpatch in Quebec, probably the most anti-fossil fuels province in the country.

Questerre is looking to develop shale gas in La Belle Province, much in the same way shale gas in the northeast United States has totally changed the North American energy market. The geology’s not all that different north of the border, and Questerre has spent many years trying develop it.

Binnion spoke to Pipeline News on Dec. 8.

Pipeline News: Can

you explain what you’ve been doing in Saskatchewan?

Michael Binnion: For five to 10 years, we’ve been in the Torquay play, similar to the Bakken, in the Antler/Fairlight area. It’s a real bread-and-butter play for us. The opportunity came up, due to the markets and timing, that our 50 per cent partner was interested in selling, so we were able to consolidate our position.

We went from 50 per cent to now we’re 100 per cent.

We bought out Crescent Point.

P.N.: They were always the acquirer, with no interest in selling.

Binnion: They were our partner for some number of years, with not interest in selling, but probably brought on by the markets, there’s been a corporate change, there.

P.N.: What are your future plans for Saskatchewan?

Binnion: We like that asset, for sure. Our plans are to optimize it.

Our real corporate focus is developing and drilling our Montney play. The asset in Saskatchewan is basically

drilled up. It’s really in the field and reservoir optimization stage of its life. And then we’re actively drilling in the Alberta Montney.

It’s a big prize for Questerre if we’re able to move forward in Quebec.

P.N.: The Montney’s not a cheap play to be working in.

Binnion: No. We’re a 25 per cent non-operating partner, so that certainly makes it easier. We drilled four wells last year, so for us that’s one net well. We expect to drill four to eight wells this year, which, for us, will be one to two net wells, in 2018.

P.N.: Questerre has been one of the few, and maybe only, oil company to dare to try to develop oil production in Quebec.

How did that come about?

Binnion: I actually drilled a well there, with a Questerre predecessor called Teranex, in 1993 – a dry hole, a big exploration well for conventional gas.

Through that process, we had a lot of seismic, good knowledge of the geology.

We went off for almost 10 years after that, doing the former Soviet Union and

other oil and gas in different places.

About 2000, we took out about a million-plus acres of land there to look for unconventional gas. I won’t say we were the first, but probably among the first in Canada looking for unconventional gas. It turns out that Michell was doing it in Texas earlier than that.

It took us until 2005 to get Talisman to farm in. Then we got Forest Oil in the United States to farm in after that. So we ended up drilling, with partners, around 15 wells there for shale gas. Other people around us drilled about another 15 wells for shale gas. That took us until 2009, at which point in time we felt we had a discovery. As technology moved along, the confidence that was a commercial discovery tended to move up, because we see all the efficiency gains in shale gas.

When industry said we wanted a modern and strict regulatory environment, because the regulatory environment was very

Michael Binnion. Photo courtesy Questerre Energy Corp. nascent, part of the Mining Act, ironically, that got the environmentalists out, saying the regulations aren’t strict enough, so we want an moratorium.

There’s where we’ve been since 2010-2011.

We’ve been in a de factor moratorium. We’re hoping/expecting it will end in 2018.

P.N.: Did you find anything with those wells?

Binnion: We had 31 shale gas wells drilled.

Probably a good 20 to 25 tests. Of that number, almost 10 were horizontal, the rest were verticals.

The best were six to seven million standard cubic feet

per day wells. One was put on a long-term, five month test. It was a substantial test of the production. But nothing’s ever been tied in.

We just got the test results.

What’s interesting about that, is that well was over a 30 day average, on an 800 well with eight fracs. You start looking down, from the Quebec Utica, across the border into the Ohio Utica, and people there are drilling 2,500 to 3,000 metre wells with ten times the fracs. So we’re pretty excited with those initial test results, with technology today, will be a lot better. ► Page A20

Separator Packages For Sale • 24” x 5’ - 250 vertical 2 phase • Skid mounted and housed with heater • Comes with all shut downs & ESDV • Gas and liquid meters and auto sampler • Totally reconditioned and ready to go • Registered in Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, as well as some in Manitoba. $ • Auto divert valve

35,000

750 Barrel Tanks For Sale 45 ton picker and double drop trailer available for delivery.

Call John at (306) 861-1280 for more information.

Gibson Welding Ltd. Oilfield Trucking & Rentals

John: (306) 861-1280

gibsonwelding10@hotmail.com • Weyburn, SK

P t

Proven Solutions and industry leader in New and Remanufactured Wellhead Equipment Frac Tree Assemblies 2” through 7” 10000 and 15000 PSI

24/7

Service and Support

Brendon Grube

306-634-0104

bgrube@greatnorthequipment.com Estevan, SK.

A20

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

Quebec may have a giant natural gas field ◄ Page A19 P.N.: What geology are you targeting, and at what depth?

Binnion: It’s the Utica formation. It’s Ordovician in age. Where we are, it’s between 1,000 and 2,000 metres in dept. The Crown owns the mineral rights.

P.N.: Where in Quebec are you?

Binnion: We’re on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River, between Quebec City and a bit west of Trois Rivieres, which is on the north shore.

P.N.: What hurdles have you faced?

Binnion: I say to people when I do my social licence speech, you know, one of my career goals – I’m a trained accountant, but I love geology. I published a peer-reviewed paper in Marine and Petroleum Geology. I love geology and am self-taught on it.

My whole career, I always thought finding a giant field was the hard part.

Almost nobody has ever (done that.) You have to go back to times of search-

ing for thing like Leduc to find a giant field. That was a lifetime goal for me.

I always thought finding the giant field would be the hard part. Now we found one in Quebec, and what I’m learning is producing it is harder than finding it.

The first main hurdle was to be able to get the play, to capture the land, to work up the geology, to find a company with the money and expertise to help us drill it, and then to find and target the right place and the right zone. There’s the classic challenges of finding a field. It was one of the very early shale gas finds in Canada. We weren’t really big, in Canada, in shale gas in 2008, but that’s when we made our discovery.

P.N.: How do you build an oil industry from scratch in a province that doesn’t seem to want it?

Binnion: I think that building an oil industry in a country or jurisdiction that doesn’t want it is extremely difficult. The challenge is to have people in Quebec change their mind and

decide they do want it.

I think, just like Alberta surprisingly has leftwing provincial and city governments, even though we’re monolithic, redneck conservatives according to the rest of the country, Alberta’s not a monolithic place at all. It’s a modern, pluralistic culture.

Quebec has a bit of a view of being monolithic as well, but it’s not. There’s very strong constituencies in Quebec that are very pro-business, very prodevelopment, very pro-oil and gas. What we’ve been doing, since the moratorium, is building and expanding that coalition of people in Quebec are very pro-business and pro-oil and gas.

When the protests happened in Quebec, we got a lot of very bad press.

The support for shale gas and fracking in Quebec was maybe 10 per cent, at the bottom. The last poll, maybe a year old now, was around 35 per cent. We’re slowly building support in Quebec.

For all your pipe inspection needs including:

It’s hard enough to get a new oil and gas industry off the ground in an industry if people do want you.

It’s extremely hard if they don’t. What we’re working on is social licence, for lack of a better term. What that really means is working on building the constituency of people who do want it.

P.N.: I was thinking about the nuts and bolts.

Where do you get a drilling rig, a service rig?

Binnion: I’ve been on the service side. When we were in the former Soviet Union, we owned all our own rigs. I’m chairman of a service company, and I’ll tell you the service companies in Alberta, and in America, are unbelievable.

If you whistle, they’ll come.

It takes three days to get equipment from here to Quebec. There’s nothing that stops us on the physical side from moving rigs and frac crews to Quebec.

We were able to drill and frac all those wells.

You’ve got to pay, but if you whistle, they’ll come.

The question is, how do you get enough economy of scale, that once the rig and

frac crews and frac trucks come there, that they don’t keep going back and forth, which is too expensive, but there’s enough work there that they stay there. Once they stay there, you’ve got an industry.

P.N.: What are your future plans? What do you see for the future for Quebec?

Binnion: The market for Quebec is about a half a billion cubic feet per day.

That’s the local market. We think we’ve got a project that will easily produce over a billion cubic feet per day, which would be 150,000; 250,000 barrels of oil equivalent, plus. We’ve very bullish.

It’s another reason we think the project will get traction. It would be so beneficial to the province of Quebec that it will be selfsufficient in natural gas.

P.N.: You would be displacing Western Canadian gas?

Binnion: Yeah, but more and more, we’d be displacing Pennsylvania gas. Basically Quebec buys as much gas as it can from the United States, and

chdd

when facilities cap out, they buy from Western Canada.

That Marcellus gas is closer to market and cheaper.

P.N. Being a local market, wouldn’t you have next to no transportation costs?

Binnion: That’s exactly right. We can be the local market, and we’ll be the cheapest gas, cheaper than Pennsylvania. We’ll have no transportation costs, and they still have to get it from Pennsylvania. We’ll be the most competitive gas in that market and it will be virtually impossible for someone to be a lower cost producer than us. Half the cost of natural gas is transportation, and we’ll be eliminating that.

P.N.: Wouldn’t your licences have expired?

Binnion: What happened during this moratorium is we’ve been given a holiday. When Talisman came in, we got our expiries refreshed. The original expiry was, I think, 2009. It refreshed when Talisman came in to 2017. When the moratorium came in, we got a holiday, so we expect it to last to 2024-2025.

Trenchless Drilling:

CARNDUFF

 Pipelines  Re - Route water wells  Sough  Install Power  Roads  Highways  Railway Tracks  Rivers Our Team offers considerable know-how earned Get ready to work. through many years of practical experience.

drill pipe, Carnduff  Weyburn  Regina casing, tubing, bottom hole assembly and hard banding Quality Directional Boring - Serving uWestern Canada ality HORIZONTAL DIRECTIONAL DRILLING Associated with

306-421-7179 #1 Malmgren

HDD RIGS AVAILABLE FROM 9000lbs to Drive. Estevan 100,000lbs Water Truck supplied with all Bore Units

er Service Ltd. k c i P s ’ y l r u C Mark T.ke(Curly) Hirsch S r e r c v i ice Ltd. P s ’ y l r u C

Q onal tiTO c e r i CALL BOOK YOUR D g BORE! n i r o NEXT B Office

306-482-3925 Rob Skuce

Call 306-482-5240 306-482-7516

to discuss your Horizontal Directional Boring Needs

COR Certified • HSE & ISN Registered

Web: www.carnduffhdd.com • Email – Susan@chdd.ca

CHDD

SALES & SERVICE

Mark T. (Curly) Hirsch

24 Hours PUMP

&

Injection Pumps Transfer Pumps

®

1595 Dieppe Cres.

Secor Certied Backhoe Available Estevan, Sask. Service Cell: (306) 461-5898 1595 Dieppe Cres.

Secor Certi ed S4A 1W8 Fax: (306) 634-6690 Estevan, Sask.

Cell: (306) 461-5898 S4A 1W8 Fax: (306) 634-6690

306.634.9190 EQUIPMENT PACKAGES

 Vapor Recover Units  Pump Skids (Pump Only or Entire Pkg) 1009B-6th St., Estevan, SK | 306.634.9190

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A21

Meili would review resource royalties and, by 2030, phase out coal

By Brian Zinchuk Moose Jaw – Dr. Ryan Meili is taking his third shot at the leadership of the Saskatchewan New Democratic Party (NDP), having run in 2009 and 2013 unsuccessfully. The Saskatoon physician was elected as MLA for Saskatoon Meewasin in early 2017.

As one of two leadership candidates, the winner will challenge whomever wins the Saskatchewan Party leadership race, which is running concurrently, but will conclude at the end of January. The provincial NDP will choose their leader on March 3, 2018.

With the next general election expected in 2020, it will feature new leadership from both of the leading parties.

Meili spoke to Pipeline News on Nov. 30 via cellphone from Moose Jaw, outlining what his energy policy would be, should he be elected premier.

“A lot of our energy policy focuses on the opportunities in renewable energy. We are a place with abundant sun, wind, opportunities for geothermal and other sources of renewable energy. That’s an area we haven’t invested in in a considerable way.

“Oil and gas is a very important industry in the province. Obviously we need to continue it, but at the same time recognize that that’s not the only form of energy and not the only energy industry we should be involved in.

We need to be diversifying both our sources for our own use in the province

as well as the types of industries built up around energy,” Meili said.

Asked for his thoughts on royalties, Meili responded, “I think that we do need a royalty review. We need to make sure we’ve got the royalty structure that is both competitive enough to allow the oil and gas industry to succeed in the province, but at the same time making sure that we’re have fair return on that product, which is a natural resource that belongs to the people of the province. A lot of the profit from oil and gas is leaving the province. We need to make

sure we’re getting our fair share of that in such a way that doesn’t impede the industry.

“One of the things that concerns me is the practice of royalty holidays, multiple-year royalty holidays that encourage fast expansion and resource depletion without getting a fair return. I don’t think that’s the best way to advance the industry.”

“I want to have a good, hard look and make sure we’re not leaving anything on the table, that we can make sure the people of Saskatchewan are able to have all the revenues they need for all the other

R.FRENCH TRANSPORT

programs we need, but doing so in a way that doesn’t actually impede those revenues by slowing down the industry,” he said.

It’s important to have consistency, so he wouldn’t be in favour of reviews excessive in frequency.

There also needs to be transparency on what they are trying to achieve.

Could royalties go down? “It’s possible, but I don’t think that’s my inclination. I want to make sure we’re getting sufficient amount as we’re needing to pay for other investments, that we are getting a return on our oil and gas investments.”

R.FRENCH Oil & Salt Water

Clean Fresh Water

COMPETITIVE PRICING

Your One Stop for

Oil changes Cars - TruCks FleeT / serviCe TruCks semis - Heavy equipmenT

Transfers

Tankers

Delivered Fresh Water: Cold or Heated

Licensed Fresh Water Well

• Clean Fresh Water Tankers • Licensed Fresh Water Well • ServiceFrac Work Insulated & Lined Service Work Oil & Salt Water Clean Fresh Water • SGI Safety Station • Oil & Salt Water Transfers 3 110m SGI• Tankers SafetyFresh Station Delivered Water: Cold or HeatedTanks • Insulated & Lined Frac Transfers

Tanks 110m3

Delivered Fresh Water: LicensedSE Fresh Serving Saskatchewan and SW Manitoba Service Work

Cold or Heated Office/Dispatch Insulated & Lined Frac

SGI Safety Station

Tanks Arcola and110m Forget, SK

Water Well

The Safety Association for Candada’s Upstream Oil and Gas Industry

R. French Transport Ltd.

(306) 455-3774 3

Serving SE Saskatchewan and SW Manitoba www.frenchtransport.ca has developed, implemented and audited a

Health & Safety afety Management Ma g System ys

One of SE Sask’s Only Eco-Friendly Shop

Office/Dispatch

306.457.1215 • Stoughton, SK

WORK HARD. REST WELL.

The Safety Association for Candada’s Upstream Oil and Gas Industry

R. French Transport Ltd.

PRAIRIE MOON INNS AND hasSUITES developed, implemented and audited a

Free Breakfast Free High Speed Wi-Fi Comfortable Spacious Rooms Kitchenettes Available Coin Operated Laundry On-Site Business Centre Fitness Centre

Prairie Moon Unity 103-2nd Ave South Unity, SK 1 (306) 228-3333

Prairie Moon Macklin 4809 Sentinel Road Macklin, SK 1 (306) 753-3020

Asked if he would go on trade missions, like outgoing Premier Brad Wall has, in support of ► Page A22

TRANSPORT

TIRE SHOP

• • • • • • •

Dr. Ryan Meili. Photo by Brian Zinchuk

Arcola and Forget, SK

Health & Safety afety Management Ma g System ys

Prairie Moon Consort 5006-43 Street Consort, AB 1 (403) 577-2770

www.prairiemooninn.com

Prairie Moon Locations Only 15 minutes away from Provost

NOW OPEN

Prairie Moon Lodge Kerrobert, SK 1 (844) 834-1212

(306) 455-3774

www.frenchtransport.ca

A22

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

We missed the boat on a sovereign wealth fund: Meili ◄ Page A21 he wouldn’t know on what case that would be.

“If there’s something in the best interests of the Saskatchewan people, and it makes sense for me to go to Washington or Beijing or whatever, I would do that, but I’m not going to forecast any of those trips at this time.”

Regarding new export pipelines, Meili said, “Pipelines are a way of transporting liquids.

That’s a really basic thing to say, but the reason I say that basic thing is because they have become, in many ways, a very polarizing concept.

Either their they absolute cure for everything in the economy or they’re the end of days. I think we need to take these pipelines through a very diligent process, that analyzes it through. Is it economically sound? That decision will be made by companies like TransCanada might decide that if an investment isn’t what they want to do.

It need to be looked at, from us, from the government, from a regulatory point of view, but also looking if this actu-

ally going improve the economy of the province?

Is it going to result in new jobs? Will it result in long-term income?”

It’s also important to look at the pipelines route and what it carries.

“You also need to look at the social costs and value of the pipeline,” he said, adding there is now a “quadruple bottom line,” with the impact on First Nations and their land as the additional bottom line item.

Any revival of Energy East is up to TransCanada, and the regulatory bodies. “I’m not trilled by political posturing around these pipelines,” he said.

He suggested that because Keystone XL has been approved, Energy East wasn’t a project TransCanada wanted to continue with.

Regarding the downturn, with pressures to use less fossil fuels because of climate change and no control over international prices Meili spoke of the need for diversification so we’re not entirely dependent on this one resource.

“It’s an area that’s

been hit hard, and an industry that’s been hit hard. We’ve seen lots of people unemployed. We need to do what we can to support the ongoing success of that industry, but also recognize they’re not the only types of employment and we need to figure out what are the ways we can assist with transition as people have left that industry. What are the other options for them?” he said.

He would like to see significant investment in renewable energy in southeast Saskatchewan as it will be affected by changes in coal-fired power.

“Carbon capture and storage is a very interesting technology, but it’s been a very expensive investment, a billionand-a-half dollars. The real return, in terms of reducing carbon emissions, is not significant, in part because the way we’re operating it is using that carbon to extract more oil. You can make the business case for that, but from a pure emissions reduction point of view, it’s not a very great argument.

“My approach, and I see this is what SaskPower is doing, would be no further carbon capture storage units, but keep the current one operating and continue to use it for its lifetime,” Meili said.

“We need to phase out coal by 2030, and I think that’s the right thing to do.

“Are there some of these plants, that, for energy needs, or for the need of transition, there’s an argument to negotiate with the federal government that it could have a 53-year lifespan. That’s something, obviously, would be worth examining and discussing. But I’m actually in favour of the phase out of coal by 2030. In terms of it’s impact from a carbon emissions point of view, it’s very significant, but also in terms of other things produced – heavy metals and other gases that cause health problems for people living around coal plants.

“We’ve got some time. Let’s be working.

This is what frustrates me about the Sask. Party.

We’ve had a decade of boom times, but every-

body knows the boom times don’t last. Was there planning for diversifying the economy, to spread out the risk?

In the years until 2030, that’s what we have to be doing as we look at the communities that will be affected by the closure of coal plants as well as we look at the electricity needs that we have.”

He thinks we missed the boat by not having a sovereign wealth fund, and that’s something he would explore in the coming years, after looking at spending priorities and diversifying the economy. Should resource revenues rise sufficiently, that would be a place to invest any surplus, he said.

“Carbon pricing is a means of putting a price on carbon. As such, using a market-based measure to decrease use. Now, that’s been shown to be a pretty effective mechanism in this field and other fields.”

He said tobacco taxation has reduced its consumption, as an example.

“It has to be done right. The very first thing

I would use the income coming for carbon pricing for would be in employment that is less carbon intensive – green jobs, renewable energy production, green building, etc., all ways to keep people working while we reduce emissions.”

He spoke of protecting agriculture and tradeexposed industries from carbon tax disadvantages compared to the United States.

“This is a very important industry, but also a volatile one. We need to make sure, in times that are really good, Saskatchewan people are getting their fair share. In times are tougher, that we’re making the changes we need, having the flexibility to encourage the industry to be successful, but also putting it in the context of a larger approach to energy overall, looking at how we deal with the need to decrease our carbon emissions overall by 30 per cent by 2030 and looking at our long term success in terms of employment and investment in the people of the province,” Meili concluded.

LTERNATIVE HORIZONTAL DIRECTIONAL DRILLING

Providing Trenchless Technology (A DIVISION OF JJ TRUCKING)

Providing The Prairies With Safe, Efficient & Affordable Directional Boring Services For Pipeline And Utility Installations.

Contact Danny Yacyshen

306-339-7788

General Oilfield Hauling

• 30 & 45 ton pickers • Winch + Texas Bed Truck • 24 Hour Hot Shot Services • Short & Long Hauls

CSL

• Matting Rental • Catwalk Rental • General Delivery • 20kw & 6kw Light Plant Rentals

HOT SHOT & PICKER SERVICES

Bryon (Dispatch): 306-461-6742 | Travis: 306-471-7671 cslpickerservices@gmail.com

Serving Southeast Saskatchewan for 35 years

• We have cranes ranging from Spyder crane (small enough to fit through a doorway) to 245 Ton Mobile and RT Cranes • 27- 45 Ton Pickers • Tractor trailer units • Pile Driving • Telehandler • Office trailer rentals

245 Ton Terex-Demag 5800 Explorer with a tip height to 350’ Call dispatch for additional specifications and pricing

306.634.5555

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A23

Wotherspoon wants transparent royalty reviews, wouldn’t build any more carbon capture

By Brian Zinchuk Moose Jaw – Trent Wotherspoon, MLA for Regina Rosemount since 2007, had taken a run at the leadership of the New Democratic Party in 2012. He lost then, but is taking another run at it now, after a stint as interim leader and leader of the opposition since the resignation of previous leader, Cam Broten.

He stepped down from that position when he announced his intentions to run for the permanent position.

The prize in the twocandidate leadership race is not just the leadership of the party, but the chance to upset the Saskatchewan Party in the 2020 provincial election and lead the province as premier.

Wotherspoon is a teacher by trade.

He spoke to Pipeline News via phone on Dec. 1, from Moose Jaw, regarding his energy policy.

“I would have a comprehensive energy policy that would recognize the strengths of this province.

Certainly, I value our oil and gas sector, our traditional energy sector, and would look to stability and support for that important industry to our province. That includes support for well-managed pipelines that can get our product to tidewater, to market, to reduce the differential on a barrel of oil and ensure the best returns to the people of

the province,” Wotherspoon said.

“A comprehensive energy policy would also invest and support the creation of renewable power across the province, supporting distributed generation of that power, creating jobs and creating investment right across the province.

Working very closely with homeowners and

Expertise when the pressure is on.

Metra Equipment Inc. is now part of Weir Oil & Gas.

24/7 Service Serving Southeast Saskatchewan and Manitoba

Our products and services address the industry’s most pressing operational and economic challenges. w w w.h

Sales New and remanufactured wellhead equipment and valves

csas.sk.ca

Now offering sucker rod guiding capabilities

ESTEVAN PUBLIC

Services Wellhead and frac tree installations

STORAGE

• • • • •

Rentals • Frac trees, 3", 4" and 5", 10,000# • Gate valves, 2", 3", 4", 5" and 7", 2,000–10,000#

Affordable Business Solutions Off Site Files Extra Product Portable Units Easy Access RV, Boat & Trailer Sites

• Miscellaneous wellhead equipment

Oil & Gas 116 Supreme Street Estevan, SK 306 634 6325

306-634-9733 DUSTIN DUNCAN, MLA Weyburn - Big Muddy 28 4th Street NE, Weyburn, SK S4H 0X7 (Tel) 306-842-4810 (Fax) 306-842-4811 (Toll Free) 1-877-842-4810

important. My aim, on this front, would be to remain transparent and ensure stability in the sector. I think that’s particularly important with challenged commodity prices. That being said, as the owners of the resource, Saskatchewan people deserve a government that will actively and transparently review ► Page A24

Visit us at the Weyburn Oil Show - Booth #261 & #262

OFFICE: 306.482.3925

For oilfield, commercial, industrial and residential wiring

farms and businesses and First Nations and municipalities in establishing opportunities for them to put power into the grid,” Wotherspoon said.

Asked about royalties, Wotherspoon said, “The people of Saskatchewan are the owners of the resource. The energy sector is an important sector in Saskatchewan.

The jobs are incredibly

The Truck You Need, The Price You Want.

Senchuk Ford Sales Ltd.

We have the keys to A Great Buying Experience.

Stop by today and experience the difference in our service, selection and value.

118 Souris Ave. N., Estevan 306-634-3696 • www.senchukford.com

A24

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

Support for Energy East, KXL and Trans Mountain Service Rig Level IV Re-Certification ◄ Page A23 the royalty structures to ensure that we have a fair shake, and a fair return, to the people of the province.

“A royalty review is absolutely something the government should be active with, and do so in a fair way, and a transparent way, with an aim to ensure a fair return to the owners of the resource, the people of Saskatchewan, in times of windfall for the industry,” Wotherspoon said.

He thinks governments should be regular in their review of royalties, in part because industries and technologies change.

Would Wotherspoon go on trade missions, like Premier Brad Wall has, in support of the energy sector? As premier, he said he would stand up for the best interests of Saskatchewan and represent our energy sector both within Canada and internationally. “We need to aim to be constructive and effective in our efforts of representing this important industry to the province,” he said.

it should be revived. “It’s something I would like to see accomplished. I would want to work in a constructive way to make the case for Energy East.”

On Keystone XL, he said he’s on the record of also supporting this pipeline, and working to close the differential on the price we receive for oil is important for all. Wotherspoon doesn’t support Northern Gateway, but has been a strong advocate for the Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Expansion.

“Pipelines are very important to our province. They’re important to our energy sector. It’s important that we manage those pipelines with as much integrity as we can.

Well-managed pipelines are critical. Strong, robust environmental assessments around those projects are very important, as well as measures to make sure that, if a company is dealing with a breach of a pipeline, that matters are contained and land and waters are protected. Well-managed pipelines are important to this province,” he said.

Wotherspoon thinks Saskatchewan needs and independent regulator for Saskatchewan-regulated pipelines, and he feels it’s not right for the Ministry of Economy doing the checks and balances.

Pipelines are also much safer than putting oil on rail, he added.

With respect to the downturn, he said, “I’ve been aware of the hurt throughout the patch and the impact on families and workers. I’ve made that case for the past number of years in the legislature, as well as dealing with a lot of workers and families that have been impacted.

“It’s part of what frustrates and upsets me with the actions of this current government that have really sold out the interests of Saskatchewan workers and businesses when building public infrastructure,” he said.

Wotherspoon said the province actively shut out Saskatchewan companies on procurement at a time when we needed to be creating Saskatchewan jobs. He also said it should have been a good

time to advance an aggressive energy efficiency retrofit program for homes, businesses, and industries. It would have put people to work and brought down emissions.

On carbon capture and storage, he said, “Clearly, the carbon capture plant the government has advanced is very costly power, in many ways, the most costly power we can put into the grid. We need to look to alternatives that will create jobs and the safe, affordable power that the people of the province deserve, and obviously, power that reduces emissions. The Boundary Dam 3 project has been very costly. My view would be we need to take a more affordable, sustainable route, with the public dollars that are being utilize around a mix of renewable power, and certainly a role for natural gas in that.”

The numbers are far to costly, at $1.5 or $1.6 billion, he said. “Certainly, I wouldn’t be expanding that technology onto other plants.” ► Page A25

dustrial is an engineering, fabrication, machining and equipment repair shop. skatchewan locations, DynaIndustrial is your single source provider of level IV rig re-certification.

ty and Capability:

pproximately 85,000 square feet of operating space ton overhead crane capacity

Servic

ntire process including disassembly, inspection, repairs/modifications, reassembly, cumentation, chroming and hydraulic cylinder rebuild/manufacture performed in-ho

ull team of engineers, machinists, welders and millwrights provide solutions and repa Trent Wotherspoon proved reliability On and exportsafety pipelines, products. It’s an impor-

:

he said, “The case I made for Energy East was it does deal directly with southeast Saskatchewan and its energy product, and create new and important markets for Saskatchewan energy

tant project, and I’ve long made that case, publicly, in the assembly.

It’s an important project, from my view, not just to Saskatchewan, but to Canada.

Wotherspoon thinks

O 9001:2008 Registered

Kim Leipert

306.825.5355 • Cell: 306.821.2880 WB Certified to W47.1 DivPh: 2 Fax: 306.825.5356

Service Rig Level IV Re-Certification

www.heavyoilfieldtrucks.com peddlerconsignment@sasktel.net

DT testing provided in partnership with an independent party DynaIndustrialthird is your single source provider 2006 Western Star Tractor

2007 IHC Water Truck

Aluminum front bumper, wet kit, air shut down, P.t.o., half fenders, dual exhaust, dual stainless steel breathers, two way radio, new CVIP. A/C: Good, A/C, Differential Lock, State DOT, 8x2, Number of Beds: 1, Wet Kit

2007 Advance 16 m3 tank, TC406-crude spec, no tank cert.

Only hauled water, 4 top hatches, T&E Load pump, shaft driven, s/n 2AESTHB047S000142, rear spray bar, hoses, tool boxes, pindle hitch, ready to go to work, A/C Condition: Good, Differential Lock, State DOT, 6x4, Wet Kit

$59,900

$89,900

Stk#13641

Stk#474827

of level IV service rig re-certification.

• Level IV recertification is performed to CAODC standards

• 60 ton overhead crane vel IV inspections are performed2001toWestern industry standards 1997 Peterbilt Flushby Star Pressure Truck capacity recommended by CAODC • 85,000 square feet of c/w Online flushby unit, 40 ft. mast., slant comptable, 3x5 gardner denver triplex pump, 2010 Advance aluminum one compartment 11m3 tank, current VIPK, pullmaster HL-25 working winch, pullmaster PL-5 catline winch, 25 ton blocks, rod swivel, all rod handling tools, all hand tools,Complete refurbished and Ready to go to work. State DOT, Wet Kit, A/C Condition: Fair, Differential Lock, Turbo

C/w 2 year old Gardner Denver 4x5 Triplex pump, c/w new pressure test and internal inspection, 2000 Advance 11m3 , single compartment tank, TC-306 ms spec., will put new tank inspection on at time of sale , Namco drop box, hydraulic drive load pump, one pressure hose, tool boxes, fittings, electronic flow meter, electronic tank gauge, New sask safety, ready to work. Complete engine rebuild, o hours. Have work orders.

State DOT, Wet Kit, A/C Condition: Fair, Differential Lock, Overhaul, Turbo, 6x4

operating space xperience to meet safety requirements for clients in the • Entire recertification is $285,000 $79,900 and gas and mining industries completed in-house Stk# 434344

Stk#966631

NEW LOCATION! Corner of Hwy. 16 & Upgrader Road, Lloydminster

A family owned and operated business committed to safety and to providing you with quality products.

    

 

SAND & GRAVEL Crushed Screened Material Testing Lab

LANDSCAPE PRODUCTS Topsoil & Sand Large Decorative Feature Rocks

510 Maplewind Rd, Stoughton, SK S0G 4T0

Excavation Demolition & Trenching Site Preparation Loading & Hauling Concrete Recycling

(306) 457-3131

feet of operating space •85,000 PSIsquare manrider certified

Entire recertification is completed in-house

•FullNDT team oftesting engineers, machinists, welders and millwrights

provide solutions and repairs for improved reliability and safety

 

We Deliver To Your Location

• Full team of engineers, machinists, welders Service Rig Level IV Recertification and millwrights provide DynaIndustrial is your single source provider of level IV service rig recertification. solutions and repairs for improved reliability and Level IV recertification is performed to CAODC standards 60safety ton overhead crane capacity

•PSIHydraulic manrider certifiedrebuild/ manufacturing division NDT testing

rebuild/manufacturing division •Hydraulic Industrial hard chroming Industrial hard chroming division division

DynaIndustrial

3326 Faithfull Ave, Saskatoon, SK (306) 933 - 4303

www.dynaindustrial.com

277 Sherwood Rd, Box 438, Regina, SK ( 306 ) 359 - 7088

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A25

$1.5 Billion for 100 megawatts was too much ◄ Page A24 “This is why it’s very important for a government to be working actively to layout a path, on the power generation side, with the jobs as well, to meet the needs of workers in the region and to meet the power demands of the province,” Wotherspoon

said.

Since the money is already sunk into BD3, it’s important to recognize, but clearly additional projects shouldn’t proceed.

On carbon tax, he said, “It’s clear we need a Saskatchewan solution.

The Sask Party’s approach of investing $1.5,

$1.6 billion into 100 megawatts of power is far to costly. That’s a carbon tax Saskatchewan people simply can’t afford. We shouldn’t left the federal government impost its structure on us. We need to build a Saskatchewan climate change plan that works for us, that protects

our trade-exposed industries and consumers, all while acting on climate change, reducing our emissions.

“There are some important opportunities for us to advance here. We should be acting aggressively around renewable power and distributed generation. That cre-

ates jobs and investment across the province. We should be advancing a very robust energy efficiency retrofit program that reduces emissions and creates jobs and investment as we retrofit homes and businesses in industry throughout the province.

“Of course, we need

to work with agricultural producers who are exceptional stewards of the land, who sequester carbon through their practice. We need to make sure they are protected, but also recognize the role of wetlands and grasslands in a climate change plan,” Wotherspoon said.

In addition to insulation, the company does foam panel and self-frame building construction, common for oilfield field applications.

With the oilfield having gone through over three years of downturn, are they crazy like a fox, or just crazy, for starting

a business in the oilpatch now? Luc responded, “It’s not crazy. The downturn’s over. We’re on the mend now.”

He added that there’s more leverage with suppliers now, when things are still slow, especially as a new company with work on the go.

Black Rhino launched in September Estevan – It didn’t take long for a new outfit to establish itself in the previous Performance Pump Service Ltd. shop in the center of Estevan.

Black Rhino Industries Ltd., an industrial insulation and building outfit, moved in. The company, which fired up Sept. 1, is already up to 13 employees between its Estevan and Drayton Valley, Alta., locations.

Kyle Luc spoke to Pipeline News about his

new outfit on Dec. 4.

The company focuses on the insulation of piping, vessels, and tanks.

“We can do steam trace, but not electrical trace,” Luc said, adding steam trace (to keep pipes thawed) is not common in southeast Saskatchewan.

Luc’s partner is Nick Trites, who runs the operation in Drayton Valley.

Soon they were growing. Luc expected them to have four staff

members for a while, but they were soon up to 10 within three weeks of starting operations. Now they’re at 13, with five two-person crews working from Grande Prairie, Alta. to Virden, Man. Where the crews are vary from day. On that day, they had two crews working out of Estevan.

When bigger jobs come up, they’ll pull people in as needed.

“I’ve been in this business a long time,” Luc

ESTEVAN SILICA SAND FACILITY State of the art silica sand trans-loading facility is ready for your fracking or sand business. Could also be modified to suit ag trans-loading. 7,000 ton capacity silos, rail-to-silo conveyor, drive-through buildings with 2 truck scales, sand pit, & operations office. Structures for sale, land is leased and expires in 2023 with three 5 year options to renew.

MLS SK711183

1,990,000

$

HARMONY RESLER

306-421-2606

REALTOR®

JOSH LEBLANC

306-421-6778

REALTOR® (Part-Time)

1228 FOURTH STREET, ESTEVAN, SK OFFICE: 306-634-9898 www.coldwellbankerchoice.ca

said, adding he has contacts all over the place.

They launched at a good time, as companies often wait until the last minute to get their insulation taken care of. That’s kept Black Rhino hopping. Luc said the business usually slows down in March, with road bans.

(306) 462-2130 nankivelltruckingltd@signaldirect.ca nankivelltrucking.ca

You Call We Haul 24 Hour Service BOX 123 KISBEY, SK S0C 1L0

MOVING THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY IN SASKATCHEWAN FOR 60 YEARS

Each office independently owned and operated.

PICK UP OR DELIVERY

RENT IT! • Scissor Lifts • Electric & Duel Fuel • Articulating Boom • Zoom Boom Forklifts • Skid Steers

• Man Lifts • Straight Boom • Diesel Tampers • Diesel Heaters • 85’ Boom

MUNICIPALITIES | CONTRACTORS THE OILFIELD | HOME OWNERS

G.T.&H HOLDINGS INC.

RENTAL EQUIPMENT Locally Owned & Operated

Chad (306) 421-1896 | Garry (306) 421-0529 info@gtandhholdings.ca | www.gtandhholdings.ca

Box 700 Carnduff, SK

306-482-3244

www.fasttruckingservice.com

A26

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

December land sale brings in $9.6 million Regina – Driven largely by continued interest in Saskatchewan’s southeast region, the December public offering of Crown petroleum and natural gas rights on Dec. 5 posted revenue of $9.6 million.

With a sixth and final sale still remaining for the 2017-18 fiscal year, the total is currently $61 million, already above the previous fiscal year end total of $50 million.

“Saskatchewan’s favourable policy and operating environment provides the industry with the kind of stability it seeks,” Energy and Resources Minister Nancy Heppner said in a release. “Drilling activity,

oil and gas related revenue, and industry investments in new exploration and development are all trending upward in Saskatchewan for 2017. We will do our part to help sustain this growth.”

Southeast Saskatchewan remains a focus of significant industry attention with 80 leases awarded on Dec. 5, consisting of 6,574 hectares and fetching $5,084,478. One lease south of Wilkie received a bonus bid of $1,642,016 for 259 hectares. This lease was purchased by STOMP Energy Ltd. and is prospective for oil in the Mannville Group.

In southeast Saskatch-

ewan there were a total of 83 leases sold, accounting for 8,420 hectares and totalling $5,084,478. That’s down from $17,286,002 in the last offering, when Crescent Point Energy Corp made a big move into what it’s calling its Lodgepole play (a formation referred to in Saskatchewan as the Souris Valley Beds).

Spartan Energy Ltd. bid $587,341 for a 129.5 hectare parcel south of Alameda. This parcel is prospective for oil in the Frobisher and Midale Beds of the Madison Group.

The highest dollar per hectare in this area was received from Synergy Land Services Ltd., who

paid $12,510/hectare for a 32.38 hectare parcel located within the Steelman Midale and Frobisher Beds Pools, five kilometres south of Lampman.

In southwest Saskatchewan, four licences were posted but only one sold. It was for 1,036 hectares, bringing in $68,013, at $65.65 per hectare. All three posted leases sold.

They totalled 2,849 hectares, for $335,037.

Top purchaser of acreage in this area was Scott Land & Lease Ltd., who spent $181,081 to acquire a 971 hectare lease parcel situated adjacent to the Leitchville and Leon Lake Shaunavon Oil Pools, 15

kilometres north of Eastend. This is also the highest dollar per hectare in this area at $186/hectare.

The top price paid for a single licence in this area was $68,013, paid by City of Medicine Hat for a 1,036 hectare parcel situated adjacent to the Instow Upper Shaunavon Oil Pool, 15 kilometres northeast of the town of Shaunavon.

The Kindersley area saw 14 leases posted and 10 sold. A bonus of $949,462 was paid for 2,072 hectares, an average of $458 per hectare.

Top purchaser of acreage in this area was Marquee Land Services, who spent $525,057 to acquire 3 lease parcels.

Top price paid for a single lease in this area was $233,359, paid by Marquee Land Services for each of two 259 hectare parcels situated in close proximity to the Whiteside Viking Sand Oil Pool, 35 kilometres west of Kindersley.

These two parcels are also the highest dollar per hectare in this area at $901/ hectare. A third parcel, consisting of 64.75 hectares and located 15 kilometres west of Kindersley, was also acquired by Marquee Land Services for $901/hectare.

In the Lloydminster area, 16 leases were posted and 12 sold, for a total of 1,214 hectares. It sold for $3,114,637, at an average of $2,564/hectare. The top purchaser of acreage in this area was Stomp Energy Ltd., who spent $1,727,495 to acquire two lease parcels.

The highest dollar per hectare in this area was received from Windfall Resources Ltd, who paid $13,667/hectare for a 16 hectare parcel located adjacent to the Dee Valley Mannville Sands Oil Pools, 10 kilometres northeast of Maidstone.

The next public offering of petroleum and natural gas rights will be held on Feb. 6, 2018.

Dwight G. Blomander CFP, CLU, CH.F.C., CHS

Employee Benefit Plans Life Insurance Disability Insurance Critical Illness Insurance E-mail: dwight@dgbcanada.ca Toll Free: 1-844-352-5659 Cell: (306) 421-1935 Office: (306) 352-5659 Fax: (306) 352-5660 300-1150 Rose Street Regina, SK. S4R 1Z6

Senate 150 Medal

Life Licence sponsored by The Great-West Life Assurance Company

Tony Day, right, received a Senate of Canada 150 Medal from the speaker of the Saskatchewan Legislature, Corey Tocher, in Regina on Dec. 8. Day, who founded Fast Trucking Service Ltd. with his wife, Vi, 60 years ago, was honoured for his commitment to the community and success in his career. Photo courtesy the Senate of Canada

FOR QUALITY CARE, VISIT OUR SERVICE CENTER NEAR YOU! FOR CUSTOM MADE TANKS CALL

Gilles Rondeau SASKATCHEWAN sales rep (204) 270-0140 rondeaug@tremcar.com

WEYBURN SERVICE CENTER

SASKATOON SERVICE CENTER

WEYBURN, SK

202 MELVILLE STREET SASKATOON, SK

Suzanna Nostadt

Darren Williams

VP OF OPERATIONS

VP OF SALES

ANNER BIT SERVICE SURFACE BIT RENTAL QUALITY RERUN & RETIP 24 HR SERVICE CHAD FROESE

CELL: 306-421-3726 OFFICE: 306-388-2941

Level Best Technologies Ltd. • Fluid Levels • Dynamometers • Build-Ups • Fall-Offs • Foam Depressions • Casing Compressors

FOR DURABILITY

WE LEASE AT THE BEST PRICE

TRUST TREMCAR! TREMCAR.COM

Dave: 306-461-4322 Pat: 306-861-9986 Nolan: 306-461-4323

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

A27

Torc plans on 44 wells in southeast Sask. in 2018 Torc Oil & Gas Ltd. announced on Dec. 12 the company’s board of directors has approved a 2018 capital budget of $165 million.

Torc’s capital program in 2018 is focused on light oil development projects, with the majority of the capital directed to drilling, completions and tie-ins (over 80 per cent), and the remainder allocated to operational and facility optimization to maximize production efficiency. The capital program is concentrated on the company’s primary core areas in southeast Saskatchewan, focused on both conventional and unconventional opportunities, along with the Cardium play in central Alberta.

Southeast Saskatchewan Torc’s asset base in southeast Saskatchewan is comprised of both conventional assets and unconventional light oil resource plays. Torc’s primary focus on the conventional asset base is to maintain production and maximize free cash flow through the efficient exploitation of identified conventional light oil pools.

Torc’s unconventional light oil resource plays provide current and future organic growth opportunities for the company.

In 2018, Torc plans to drill 44 gross (37.2 net) conventional wells.

With more than 400 net undrilled conventional locations identified, the 2018 budget represents less than 10 per cent of Torc’s conventional development locations. These locations are characterized by their lower risk nature and high rates of return driven by their lower capital costs, high netbacks and the attractive royalty regime in Saskatchewan. Southeast Saskatchewan conventional activity will comprise approximately 30 per cent of the company’s 2018 drill-

Torc plans on an active drilling program for 2018.

File photo ing, completion and tie-in capital budget.

On the company’s unconventional asset base in southeast Saskatchewan, Torc has been active on the Torquay/Three Forks light oil resource play. During 2017, Torc executed on a development program drilling 13 gross (10.0 net) successful wells in the play.

Based on the company’s results from this program, Torc will continue to increase capital allocated to this resource play with plans to drill 17 gross (13.5 net) wells during 2018 representing less than 10 per cent of the 150 net identified Torquay/Three Forks development locations on the company’s land base. The Torquay/Three Forks activity in southeast Saskatchewan will comprise approximately 30 per cent of the 2018 drilling, completion and tie-in capital budget.

Torc has also established prospective land positions in a number of areas that have the potential for unconventional Midale exploitation. Based on detailed technical analysis, as well as competitor offset well results, Torc has been active on the emerging unconventional Midale light oil resource play in the fourth quarter of 2017 drilling six gross (4.6 net)

wells. Torc plans to increase capital allocated to this light oil resource play in 2018 with plans to drill 12 gross (11.0 net) wells spread across the company’s land position for both the development and further delineation of this play.

Together, the conventional and unconventional southeast Saskatchewan

capital allocation represents approximately 77 per cent of the overall drilling, completion and tie-in capital budget during 2018.

Cardium In 2018, Torc plans to drill 12 gross (10.5 net) wells across the company’s land position in the Cardium to maintain production. With a decline profile of less than 25 per cent, the Cardium play continues to generate substantial free flow in the current commodity price environment supporting the sustainability and repeatability of the company’s business objectives.

Torc has currently identified over 290 net light oil focused development locations on the company’s asset base for future growth. Torc’s development plans for the Cardium represents approximately 23 per cent of the drilling, completion and tie-in activity in 2018.

CAREER PERMANENT FULL TIME POSITIONS AVAILABLE POSITIONS OPEN IMMEDIATELY

Picker Operator Helpers Submit resume and drivers abstract to: Email: grimessales@sasktel.net Fax: 306-487-2560 Candidates will be subject to Fit and D & A testing.

CAREER

TORC Oil & Gas Ltd. is a publicly-traded, intermediate, light oil company with a proven track record of growing production and creating significant value through an acquisition / exploitation / exploration strategy focused on light oil resource plays. Since inception in December 2010, the TORC Team has been successfully developing its high quality light oil assets in southeast Saskatchewan and the central Alberta Cardium resource play, both being areas where the TORC Team has an established track record. TORC’s experienced management team is leading an exciting strategy of paying a sustainable dividend to shareholders while continuing to provide disciplined per share growth, and our success is attributed to that leadership and our team of skilled and dedicated employees and consultants working together to achieve TORC’s goals.

Due to its continued growth, TORC is currently accepting applications for Battery Operators in southeast Saskatchewan. Reporting to the Production Foreman in the Estevan Area, the main responsibilities will include: • Optimizing and troubleshooting daily well production • Operation and maintenance of oil wells and facilities • Daily input and balancing of data into PVR • Ensuring a safe and cost effective operation Qualifications: • Minimum of 3-5 years of oilfield experience in the oil and gas industry • Minimum of a Grade 12 High School diploma • Knowledge of conventional multi well oil batteries and of single well batteries and tank treating systems • Operational background with inlet separation, fired oil treating equipment, production tanks and saltwater disposal pumps • Must be organized with strong attention to detail while managing multiple priorities • Ability to identify problems and develop solutions • Ability to clearly communicate at all levels • Must be strong team player If you are a qualified candidate and are interested in this opportunity please send a resume, in confidence, to:

This position will remain open until filled. We thank you for your interest, however, only those applicants selected for an interview will be contacted.

RM of Souris Valley No. 7

FOR THESE UPCOMING POSITIONS

Local applicants • Pipeline Construction Manager preferred.

• Pipeline Construction Supervisors • Maintenance Crew Foremen EMAIL RESUMES ONLY TO: Lionel Pouliot • Equipment Operators lpouliot@banditenergy.ca • Oilfield Labourers

equivalent per day (boepd) (greater than 90 per cent light oil and liquids) for aggregate consideration comprised of the issuance of 5.8 million Torc common shares and $25 million in cash.

Email: jlarter@torcoil.com Fax: (306) 634-7567 Mail: 1129 - 4th Street | Estevan, SK | S4A 0W6

NOW HIRING! For our S.E. Sask. Office Located in Weyburn

Three acquisitions During the fourth quarter of 2017, Torc completed three asset acquisitions along with two minor non-core asset dispositions.

The net production addition was 900 barrels of oil

FULL

Work closely with the Administrator and oversee day to day activities of the roads and operators. Must have knowledge of equipment, a mechanical aptitude and experience with heavy equipment such as Graders, Tractors, etc.

Duties include (but not limited to) mowing, snow removal, installation of signs and culverts, equipment servicing and repairs and ordering products.

Class 5 driver’s license, strong leadership, supervisory and communication skills, excellent interpersonal and organizational skills, able to supervise operators, excellent record keeping and be willing to take further education/training. Responsible for doing weekly safety meetings.

A salary package, including competitive benefits/pension plan, will be negotiated based on qualifications at the time of hire.

Please send your resume with references to the RM of Souris Valley No. 7 Email: rm07@sasktel.net  Fax: 306-456-2480 In person or by regular mail: Box 40, Oungre, SK S0C 1Z0 The RM of Souris Valley No. 7 thanks all applicants for their interest, however, only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

A28

PIPELINE NEWS January 2018

Being Unconventional Is What Sets Us Apart GOLD STANDARD SERVICE Summit ESP® – A Halliburton Service offers versatile, horizontal surface pumping systems to help get your production up and running quickly. In today’s challenging market, operators require more out of their equipment providers. With best-in-class lead times, Summit ESP delivers with a quick response on new and retrofit systems. » Patented pump designs for a wider operating range and more turndown capability » Consistent delivery record on complete systems » Retrofit capabilities on competitor equipment, including direct replacement of pump elements and thrust chambers » Dedication to rapid response and high customer satisfaction

© 2017 Halliburton. All Rights Reserved.

Summit ESP outperforms in technology and service, putting your production into motion.

Contact us today to learn more about our horizontal pumping systems and preventative maintenance services.

summithps.com