When you see things like three snowmobiles going up for sale from the same person on a local Facebook “garage sale” page, one wonders if they are just tired of sledding, upgrading, or maybe they can’t make the payments and need to sell off toys, fast.
It’s difficult to tell. But welcome to the world where no one has cash.
This month Pipeline News focused on “Coping with the Downturn.” We were initially going to do stories on tires. This seemed more important.
I tried to speak to a broad variety of people, from addictions treatment in Lloydminster and a Realtor in Shaunavon to a mix of drilling companies. (The Realtor was one of the few upbeat people I spoke to.) I also called up a number of the industry associations. From almost all angles, the response has been pretty clear. Everyone’s having a tough go of it.
One drilling company has had good utilization numbers, but most I have spoken to, including some that didn’t have a story this month, have had a very tough year. Watching the active drilling rig activity on our sister publication, Rig Locator (riglocator.ca) has been brutal at times. In mid-September the active rig count dropped to the 17-18 range, as Crescent Point all but shut down its drilling program before resuming about two weeks later.
In the drilling community, there’s been a shakeup of senior management with several companies, with several well-known players now no longer working for those companies. I’ve been expecting some sort of shakeup to occur, it was just a question of who and when. Now it finally did.
I ran into one business owner who shut down his Estevan operations that very day, after decades in this town. I popped into an office building in downtown Estevan and found out that an environmental firm had packed up its office the week before.
Different companies have taken different strategies to deal with the downturn. Some are working further afield. Some have dramatically reduced hours. The Service Canada Work Share program has been put to good use at others, and is something I would suggest more companies should look into.
Very few companies I have spoken to in recent months have retained all their staff.
Curiously, some companies have not been receiving a lot of resumés. Why is that? Is it because workers in the industry realize there’s not much point, because they know the realities of the situation? Have they found jobs in other lines of work? Are they sitting on Employment Insurance? Several managers had similar thoughts.
Several months ago I wrote that a few who have been in the business for several decades told me this downturn is starting to look like the big one of 1986. Now, that’s almost a universal sentiment, although a few brave souls have expressed otherwise.
With the exception of Trinidad Drilling buying CanElson Drilling this past summer, there really haven’t been a lot of consolidations, mergers or buyouts. There’s no point buying out the competition if there’s no work for either of you, perhaps? Why buy three or four more rigs when you don’t have work for the rigs you already have?
There also haven’t been a lot of companies going out of business, either. That’s been a blessing, but can they last?
In a world where the oil price is expected to be “lower-for-longer,” how long can businesses, and individuals, last?
Thus, we will continue coping. Things will get better, we just don’t know when.
Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at brian.zinchuk@sasktel.net.
