It was three years ago this month that oil prices began their big decline. Three years, folks. We’re now entering year four.
The downturn didn’t really show its teeth until Nov. 26, 2014, when OPEC met and decided to let the price of oil float. It took a header from US$75 a barrel and we haven’t seen it anywhere close since then.
The Financial Postnoted on June 14 that the vacant office space in downtown Calgary now roughly equates the total amount of office space in downtown Vancouver.
So it’s with this in mind that one must consider some grumbling we’ve heard about attendance numbers at the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show, a.k.a. the Weyburn Oil Show. They’re down by about 1,000 or so. Apparently 3,951 attended.
Considering how many layoffs there have been in the oilpatch in Canada, being down by only 1,000 is amazing.
You’ve probably read in a very large number of our stories in recent months there is a very common figure: half. Nearly all of the oilfield services businesses Pipeline News has spoken to in the last year had laid off roughly half of their staff compared to 2014 levels. In Carnduff, alone, in January our count ran into the hundreds of positions that were cut.
That figure was confirmed time and time again, speaking to the people at the various booths at the oil show. Many have started hiring again, a little at a time, but the shrinkage by half, with some variation, was quite consistent.
The reason this fact is often repeated is it provided context. If you read about one company having reduced its staffing by half, you might think they were the exceptional case, and things couldn’t have been that bad. They were.
So, it is within that context that one must consider the attendance at the oil show. Being down 1,000 isn’t bad at all. It’s actually quite good, given the number of people who have lost their jobs in the last few years. It used to be common to run into someone from Nova Scotia or Newfoundland working in Oxbow or Estevan. It’s not nearly as common now. They’ve largely gone home to wherever it was they came from.
What’s more significant is that the show still sold out. And there were people there who were really the people the exhibitors were aiming to see. We encountered production foremen, CEOs and board members from several oil companies.
All-in-all, it was a good show, and it’s great to see how Weyburn’s oilpatch comes together to do it every too years. We look forward to seeing you there, June 5-6, 2019.
