It appears the Estevan Energy Expo won’t return next year.
The event was organized by the Estevan Chamber of Commerce for the first time in June 2014, and was billed as a potential biennial gathering of the oilfield, mining and power production sectors. It attracted about 40 exhibitors to Affinity Place, and featured several prominent speakers.
At the time, it was hoped it could become a popular event for the energy sector in the years opposite the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show in Weyburn, which is also held on a biennial basis.
Jackie Wall, the executive director of the chamber, said an energy expo is the type of event that requires at least a year to organize. Since the chamber went 10 months without an executive director before she was hired in June, and there was uncertainty within the chamber because economic development and tourism services were shifting to the city.
It meant that there wasn’t any ground work happening for the expo.
“Those things take at least a year or two to … book in the booths, it takes a lot of time beforehand to get it going,” said Wall.
The chamber also doesn’t have the staff numbers that they had when the first energy expo happened.
The challenges facing the oil and gas sector also factored into the chamber’s decision, as cutbacks in the oil and gas sector are affecting the number of people that energy companies have to send to events such as an energy expo.
