In the last week I’ve spoke to some of the most knowledgeable people I know in the Saskatchewan oilpatch, business owners all, from Weyburn, Lloydminster and several from Estevan. There’s a rising chorus of dissatisfaction amongst them. Things should be booming in this province’s oilpatch, but they aren’t. And this disquiet could threaten the governing Saskatchewan Party with the potential loss of a key portion of its base.
Watch for a Part 2 to this tomorrow.
What’s the chance companies aren’t investing due to Sask being in open conflict with the feds? Not faulting the province but large companies might be hesitant to put other interests at risk due to being seen as supporting Sask? just speculating
no trust in any government
cal2
This is what happens when Liberals are part of a coalition government and the NDP owns the bureaucracy.
If I were an Oil and Gas CEO, I would make the elimination of debt my preferred use of free cash flow given that the banksters are in bed with the regime that believes in magical energy solutions including divestiture.
Are all those business owners named John Galt?
“Strong property rights under British common law were once the cornerstone of our enviable Canadian prosperity, but modern statutory law is turning this bedrock foundation to quick sand!”
The SaskParty government also has done nothing whatsoever to curb the overreach of community “planners” that are very busy trampling rural property rights too.
Moe engages in rhetoric but he produces little action on the freedom fronts.
A federal government opposed to it
There may be wells in Sask, but very little for Service Company support, most of which needs to travel from Alberta on a job per job bases. As the downturn since 2014 has gutted Alberta based service companies, the remainder are now mostly concentrated in northern Alberta. It’s time consuming and more expensive to travel great distances for shallow wells with less available equipment & manpower, unless multi-well contracts are signed.
What area are you referring to? Kindersley? Shaunavon? Because that’s absolutely not the case in southeast Saskatchewan, except for fracking. We used to have seven frac companies here, now we have one. And most of their crews are not from here.
“We used to have………And most of their crews are not from here.”
We used to see allot of Service Crews in convoy between AB & Sask, not so much anymore. Allot of major companies were based in Med Hat, Brooks, & Red Deer and have since shut down, downsized, or moved to Nisku & GP.
No claims here that there is no activity, just saying it’s nowhere near where it should be in a healthy western oil-patch in line with your question and offering some input.
“With oil prices at $94 a barrel, why is industry activity akin to when it was half of that?”
Because even at $94 per barrel benchmark (and it’s discounts on the future’s market) they still haven’t exceeded the risk premium required to overcome the Federal Government’s open hostility to new oil?
I don’t know what the number is to get them to take the risks, but $94 (or $100) doesn’t seem to be big enough.
Perhaps these companies can see through the false front that the sask party has hid behind. They talk big and pretend to be conservative but have moved left in fear of the media. Business people who are fed up with increased rules and regulations are going to look to other places and see that we are being given lip service here. If everyone is in the same boat, it won’t be noticed but when a jurisdiction right next door starts showing signs of heading in a better direction or are simply are tired of being abused, they tend to vote with their feet and wallets.
There is nothing worse than having a bureaucracy limit your opportunities for no logical reason other than because they can.
Canada is a hostile environment. Better off fighting the Colombian warlords, or drilling in the south china sea than dealing with Ottawa.
Oil companies can barely turn a profit these days, even with what would have been considered high prices from yesteryear. The industry has been hit over and over again from the scum that rule us – first from Special Ed’s “fair share” royalty hike, then Rachel’s commies hiking it even more while making it exponentially more difficult to calculate, and then the carbon tax using the anti-scientific lie of global warming as the excuse, and then the fortune that companies have to spend to monitor, track, measure, and audit insignificant amounts of harmless emissions.
Oil companies have basically been taxed to the hilt in order to subsidize the inefficient and astronomically costly “green” energy alternatives in order to make it appear like a viable alternative. In reality, this is all a game of smoke and mirrors to sell to morons on the left who want to believe that this is the case.