Alameda– A phone call to Brent Dunnigan, CEO of Epping Energy Inc., asking if he wanted to go for lunch, came with a surprising result.
“Sure,” he said. “I was just out looking at some land.”
And while Dunnigan is as much a farmer as he is an oilman, with chickpea samples in his office next to land maps, he wasn’t looking for a place to plant quinoa. No, what he would like, would have roots over a kilometre deep.
That’s right – when everyone else is ducking for cover, Epping Energy is on the hunt, looking for land. He sees the current conditions, with depressed oil prices, resulting in depressed land prices, as a time when smaller juniors can get back in the game.
“I’m finally seeing the opportunity coming back for the smaller producers,” he said on Feb. 4, citing reduced land, mineral and service costs.
But that doesn’t mean now is the time to start spudding new wells to bring on new production via the drill bit. A well’s best production is in its early days, and bringing one online during these times of very low prices would be almost giving it away.
“We’ll try to hold back our production. We’re not going to give away our oil at this price,” he said.
Dunnigan graced the front page of Pipeline News in March 2011 in our previous focus on junior producers. A few months later he was one of two people named Southeast Saskatchewan Oilman of the Year.
Five years ago in February, he had a rig drilling just north of Alameda. Not this time, however. Right now, the strategy is to get land in place, then drill when the time comes.
Epping’s last new well was drilled in the fall of 2014, near Pierson, Man.
Now is a good time to be looking for land to develop Dunnigan feels.
“Now is the time to be doing acquisitions, not drilling,” he said, adding it’s cheaper to buy production than drill for it.
“Now is the time to be acquiring.”
While in hot areas, like the Viewfield Bakken and Oungre area, land prices will still maintain some value; in other places, the price is more reasonable.
Thus, he’s been looking at the Crown land sales results, which happened to be announced earlier that day.
“Larger players have made it really tough on us. We’re able to deal with them now,” he said.
That change has only taken place in the past few months. As recently as last fall, when his daughters were on the swathers and combines, Dunnigan had expressed frustration over the inability to get larger oil companies to loosen their hold on some land.
“We saw a shift this fall, in October, November,” he said. “They had been buying and holding.”
What it all comes down to, however, is capital.
“It doesn’t matter unless you have the capital to deploy, develop and put in the infrastructure,” he said.
Epping Energy Inc. is a joint venture with 70 to 80 investors between Alberta and Saskatchewan. Epping is headquartered in Alameda and Calgary.
Asked how the last 18 months of the downturn have been, he replied, “I didn’t believe it would get this low. We’re prepared. We can survive in a downturn market. We’ve had to do some different thinking – out of the box, non-conventional ways of doing things.”
As an example, he said, “We basically bought our own tank truck for hauling emulsion.”
That truck, in turn, was bought from the Big Eagle bankruptcy auction.
Epping’s production (whose volume he is shy to disclose in print) has remained flat.
“We’ve been fairly blessed. We’ve remained fairly stable,” Dunnigan said.
Dunnigan has spent the winter since October, preparing in earnest and looking for deals. They’ve exercised a couple of private deals already with more in the works.
As for Epping’s position, he said, “We’re holding our own. I would say healthy, making the right moves early.
“I think most of the people who have gone through this before are in good shape, but that’s 10 to 20 per cent.
He noted the 2009 downturn was a little bit of a blip, and most were able to hold their own.
“I would say the critical time will be after spring breakup and the summer of 2016, both for producers and service companies. The service companies are going to be hurting sooner than the oil companies, by six months. Hopefully there’s an agreement worked out between the provincial and federal governments on an accelerated well cleanup program.”
One of the factors, Dunnigan noted, was how old companies were. Newer ones are not as secure as older ones. “I feel for the service companies, as I spent over 25 years in the service business myself, including during 1986.”
Looking to the end of 2016, he said, “We’ll see higher oil prices, a slow recovery.”
Does that mean we’re at the bottom of the market now?
“I’d like to think so. We’ll see some floaters, some bounces up and down. You’ve got to have a minimum of confidence of three or four months at US$50 per barrel for WTI.”
“You would see probably workovers and production rejuvenation before consistent drilling,” he forecasts. That would likely take place for three to six months before drilling picks up again.
When the Bakken boom hit southeast Saskatchewan, the region was, by-and-large a hodgepodge of small, junior oil companies. However, consolidation in recent years has dramatically reduced the number of those small oil companies.
“I’d like to see a resurgence of small companies again. I really would. I think it would really help the environment of the Saskatchewan oilfield and economy. From (2008) until now, there’s a lot less of us left,” Dunnigan concluded.
Why the focus on land? In recent years, smaller players like Epping have had a hard time finding land that’s available, as much of it had been locked up by larger players. The bigger oil companies weren’t inclined to let go of any of their properties.
