When I interviewed Premier Scott Moe during the fall election, he surprised me by saying he would like to see this province reach 1 million barrels of oil production per day, up from its current ~450,000 bpd. In 2019, the Saskatchewan Party government put forward a goal of hitting 600,000 bpd by 2030.

That got me thinking – could this be done? How? What would it take?

And when he won the election and promised to get everyone a family physician, I immediately wondered, where would the money come from? How are we going to pay for all of these doctors and teachers?

And what would the benefit be if we did double oil production? The impact would be massive. Oil is already our number one contributor to GDP, greater than ag or potash. We can’t easily double either of those. But we can do something about oil.

North Dakota went from 90,000 bpd to over a million in a few short years. They have vastly superior geology in one way, but we have 30 billion barrels of heavy oil that they don’t have.

So I started asking around, and did a few interviews, the first of many.  I’ve been talking about this for a while, and now it’s time to put the pedal to the metal.

This will be an ongoing series, meant to explore just how Saskatchewan could double its oil production. Some might be naysayers. But maybe some will have some good ideas. I’m going to interview all the smartest people in the room over the coming months, even years, and keep pumping out stories. Premier Moe told me during my Christmas interview to “keep the heat on us,” and I intend to.

And in the end these stories are going to effectively be wrapped in a bow and plopped on the energy minister’s desk, with the ideas from the brightest people in the Saskatchewan oilpatch. Here you go, have at ‘er.

Reaching for a Million, Part 1: If Saskatchewan wants to pay for doctors and teachers, we need to drill, baby, drill