Weyburn – Bandit Energy Services was looking for someone to head up their new operation in Weyburn, and Lionel Pouliot was coming off a five-year non-compete agreement. The result was a good match, according to Pouliot, who now heads up Bandit’s southeast Saskatchewan location.
Pouliot has a long history in oilfield construction and maintenance, having worked with Carson Energy Services and its successor companies from 1983 until last year.
“Southeast Saskatchewan is showing a market opportunity, for sure, and an opportunity to get local people in the area,” Pouliot said on May 2.
“I started at the end of the shovel, working maintenance truck, crew truck. I started working on some bigger projects. When we expanded into Halbrite around 1997, I was managing that facility with six guys.
“At peak, when it was busy, it was 120 people,” he said.
That shop is now closed and listed for sale.
In a way, Pouliot is starting over again. “This situation is no different than Halbrite – start with six guys and try to build it up.”
“We’re targeting the Bakken in the Stoughton area, and the Flat Lake play. We go as far east as Highway 9,” he said, noting the want to work relatively local.
Pouliot was one of the senior managers of Carson Energy Services and was a part-owner. He, along with those others who were bought out, had a five-year non-compete agreement. That agreement expired Oct. 1, 2016.
Pouliot had worked with the successor companies – Flint Energy Services, URS and AECOM which had each, in turn, owned and operated what was once Carson Energy Services.
“When Flint took over, there were three of us just below Ron (Carson); myself, Steve Smith and Quinn Olson at Wainwright. Steve had Lampman, and I had Estevan, Carlyle, Alida, Virden, Halbrite, Kipling and Oxbow.”
Dale Ziegler looked after the mainline division, at White City.
In the fourth year after the purchase, and with the industry in a downturn, they downsized. “I went to Regina and looked after White City, Swift Current and Virden. Steve took the rest of southeast Saskatchewan,” Pouliot said. “I did that for nine months and they let me go March 2016.
“I spent time at Kenosee Lake relaxing and finished off some landscaping.”
Bandit ran an advertisement in the paper looking for someone to run their Weyburn operation. “It was the perfect fit. It worked well for us both,” Pouliot said.
He does not have ownership in Bandit, nor had he considered going out on his own, but some people suggested he should.
In Weyburn they’re concentrating on maintenance and construction of facilities, single and multi-well batteries, as well as some small pipeline work. They’ll be working on steel and fibreglass, and in early May workers were segmenting the Weyburn shop to isolate carbon steel work from stainless steel work.
“We’re a Canadian Welding Bureau shop. We can weld structural steel according to code,” he said, adding their quality control program is approved by the Saskatchewan boiler branch, now known as the Technical Safety Authority of Saskatchewan.
“We’re going to do some welding and fabrication,” he said. Welders are typically subcontractors, and Pouliot has many contacts along those lines.
“We have lots of support from Lloydminster if we need it,” Pouliot said.
Bandit is long established in the Lloydminster area as a pipeline construction contractor. Their services also include general oilfield construction and maintenance and civil construction.
Asked about the rates service companies can charge oil companies, and how those have been brought low by the downturn now in its third year, Pouliot said, “It’ll be tough to slide those up again.”
He noted the price of oil is a major factor. “Maybe if it hits US$75 again?” he noted. “The other thing is, if there’s going to be a shortage of people, we’re going to have to offer more money to people to keep them. If the oil companies won‘t let us up the rates, we won’t have the people to supply them. There’s a shortage of people, qualified people with experience.”
“More importantly, it’s about people. Do they know what they’re doing? Are they experienced?” Pouliot said, noting the importance of paying more for good people.
So far the Weyburn shop has three excavators, one D8 dozer, a motor grader, rubber-tire backhoe and skid steer loader. They have four crew trucks and a tri-drive winch tractor.
“If we need something, they’ll send it from Lloydminster.”
He’s got growth on his mind. “It would be nice to have 30 to 40 people work here. We’d like to have to expand our shop, but we need some growth for that to happen.
Guy Church, who has 39 years experience in the oilfield, has signed on, filling the roles as assistant manager, safety coordinator and business development.
Pouliot said, “We’re focused on local. We want to hire local people as much as we can. We want to support local as much as we can. I insisted the license places (on vehicles) were green.
“It’s important to be part of the community,” he concluded.
