Saskatoon– Intec Controls Inc. has increased its focus in the oilpatch in recent years.
Mike Swejda is president and owner. He noted the company, founded in 1994, is completely Saskatchewan-based, and always has been. “Our primary business has been as a sales agent for major manufacturers in automation and instrumentation,” he said.
Based in Saskatoon, Intec has five full-time employees. The company started out serving the mining sector, but the introduction of Wes Orischuk, who handles outside sales focusing on oil and gas, has picked up their presence in that market.
“I worked oil and gas construction for 12 years, primarily pipeline,” said Orischuk. He started as a labourer and ended up as a technician on automated welders. He worked on both small- and big-inch projects.
The oilfield is about one-third of Intec’s business, and that has significantly increased in the last three or four years. Mining, utilities, water treatment and grain handling are other areas of their business, and include items like radar for grain bin levels, temperature sensors and slide gate monitoring.
SCADA and PLC systems are also offered by Intec.
For the oilfield, Swejda said, “Our main items are pressure transmitters, for wellheads and batteries, Coriolis flow meters on brine, injection and disposal wells.”
They do sell some radar level devices and capacitance point level devices. Their fluid level measurement instrumentation can be a contact switch with works as a high level backup, but they also can do interface measurement.
The company works with local contractors in the Estevan and Coleville areas. In Saskatchewan, they carry the Siemens line of instrumentation. “We’re breaking into Lloydminster now, and we’re trying to break into Swift Current,” Orischuk said.
“We deal in all areas of the province; more and more in the Kindersley and Coleville areas,” he added.
“We need to align ourselves with a contractor in the southwest,” Orischuk said.
They noted it’s important to be competitive on price. “When the pennies get pinched, this is an equally good product,” Swejda said.
While much of their Siemens product comes out of Europe, level and flow products are made in Canada. That line was made by Miltronics, a Canadian company that was purchased by Siemens. Customers can go to Peterborough where they can get hands-on factory training.
“We inventory the product in Saskatoon,” he said, allowing for shipment within the province in short order.
Pressure transducers are their most common product sold, followed by capacitance level meters, radar level meters and mass flow meters.
They noted that magnetic flow meters on high pressure systems tend to wear out, so while a mass flow meter may cost more, it has lower maintenance costs. These are primarily used in handling brine, but they are working on using it as a water cut meter.
Starting in late 2014, oil companies demanded vendors reduce their prices in almost every sector as oil prices crashed. Asked how they contended with this, Swejda said they lost one bid and went to the factory to get a better discount. They had pricing specifically for oil and gas. “We gave bare bottom prices when oil was high,” he said.
Swejda added, “The supply market isn’t saturated. It’s specialty and technical. You can’t go to the corner store and pick up a Coriolis meter.”
Orischuk noted that larger quantity orders can get a better discount from the factory.
Essentially they act like a wholesaler.
Intec Controls will be at the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show in Weyburn June 7-8. They also regularly attend the Lloydminster Heavy Oil Show.
