With spring breakup due to hit in mid-March, oil companies have squeezed in as many final wells as possible. The provincial Ministry of Highways usually brings in its annual spring road restrictions around March 15, depending on the weather, so most drilling operations need to be completed around then, especially if the rig will be moved before being racked. A strong blast of winter solidified roads and leases that were becoming sloppy, allowing drillers to keep going to the very end. On March 10, there were still 58 active drilling rigs, according to sister publication Rig Locator (www. riglocator.ca). Southeast Saskatchewan saw activity primarily in three clusters. The usual Stoughton area grouping was dominated by six rigs working for Crescent Point Energy Corp. Two rigs were working for Ridgeback Resources Inc., both in the Forget area. A new cluster of drilling has emerged, running in a north-south line from Wilmar to south of Alameda. Eight rigs could be seen working there, and it was an entirely mixed bag of operators. Going from north to south, Torc Oil and Gas
Ltd., Crescent Point (two rigs), Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., Spartan Energy Corp., Villanova 4 Oil Corp.,
Hunter Oil and Gas Ltd. and Vermilion Energy Inc. The Flat Lake play along the U.S. border near
Torquay and Oungre had six rigs working, all for Crescent Point. Turnstone Energy Inc.
was an outlier, drilling just south of Weyburn. Spartan Energy Corp. had another outlier in the
Queensdale area, south of Manor. Spartan had another rig working just south of there, in the Cantal district.
