Carlyle – Coming into Carlyle from the north or west, it’s hard to miss the Crescent Point Energy Corp. field office, located on the northwest corner of town. The 22,000 square foot facility saw construction start in 2014, and the company moved into it in June 2015.
That field office is now home base for 53 Crescent Point employees, four more than the company’s two combined offices in Weyburn, according to Tim Lequyer, who is the superintendent of southeast Saskatchewan operations. He spoke to Pipeline News on Jan. 16. In Weyburn they actually operate out of two buildings, having acquired the former Legacy Oil + Gas office.
Lequyer explained that Carlyle and Weyburn both look after southeast Saskatchewan, as opposed to one office looking specifically after one region, and the other looking after a second region.
The Carlyle office was built with growth in mind, as it has room for 80 people. When they tore down their old office, they gave the lot back to the town.
The company has about 5,200 producing wells in southeast Saskatchewan. In 2017 they hit a landmark 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent production per day (boepd) in the region. That number is now around 95,000 boepd, of which roughly 20,000 is natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs). In the southeast region they have about 170 batteries/facilities, and four gas plants (Viewfield, Glen Ewen, Flat Lake and the Saskatchewan Ethane Extraction Plant (SEEP)). They also have a rail loading facility at Stoughton, which has been dormant for about eight months, with most of its staff redeployed.
Crescent Point is the largest oil producer in Saskatchewan, having surpassed Husky Energy several years ago. For the past several years it has almost always been the most active drilling company in Canada, and as of mid-January it had 26 rigs working in Saskatchewan, of which 25 were in Saskatchewan and 16 were in southeast Saskatchewan, according to sister publication Rig Locator (riglocator.ca).
Lequyer lives south of Carlyle, and splits his time between Carlyle and Weyburn offices. He started working for Talisman in 1995, and moved to Alberta in 2003, and then came back for Crescent Point in 2008. “There was about 15 employees in the southeast, and some contract operators,” he recalled.
“We acquired Talisman in 2009. When we bought Talisman, they had the office in Carlyle. At that time, we did not have an office in Weyburn,” he said. “We ended up with a small office in Carlyle, a small office in Estevan, and we were kind of working out of a back shop in Weyburn. They had already plans to build in Weyburn at that time. We chose to keep the Carlyle office open because of the proximity of properties, and subsequently close the Estevan office once Weyburn was open.”
“We treat the operation as southeast. We don’t treat it as Carlyle, or east or west.
“The properties may be based out of the offices, but the people cross over a fair amount,” he said.
“We’ve got operations engineers, who are responsible for production, facilities engineers responsible for facilities.
“There’s 53 employees that call Carlyle home, and 49 that call Weyburn home,” Lequyer said. Some are foremen, which only spend a day or two in the office, as most of their time is in the field.
Those staff counts don’t count a number of consultants in various capacities, from wellsite supervisors to completion consultants, geologists or others.
“All-in-all, we have about 320 people who work for production operations,” he said, referring to the southeast. Right now there’s close to a 50/50 split between the two offices. As the company develops its newly announced Lodgepole play, south and southwest of Weyburn, that may lead to something of a shift in that direction. However, it will take some time for that play to develop.
While many oilpatch operations, like fracking and drilling, are in constant contact with Calgary offices, there’s still very much a need for field offices like that in Carlyle. Lequyer thinks it’s still pretty important. “Things can be lost in translation, electronically communicated. Face-to-face meetings will never be completely replaced,” he said. “There’s still a need for that.”
He spoke of Crescent Point’s culture, one he described as “family-oriented.”
“It does keep a bit of a small company atmosphere,” he said, despite the fact Crescent Point has been Saskatchewan’s largest oil producer, and the most active driller in Canada, for several years now.
“It’s a balance. We’re trying to keep it. But it gets tougher as you get larger,” Lequyer said.
Asked about the rates oil companies are willing to pay their vendors, given that oil prices have come up from much lower levels in the last few years, he responded, “We want to be fair and create some equitable approaches for the businesses to make money when times are better. Does that mean it’s going happen right away? I don’t know. One thing is, the prices didn’t drop when the price of oil did immediately, either. There was a bit of a delayed reaction in requesting price reductions, by most producers. Now we’re starting to go the other way, hopefully, and seeing a price increase. Hopefully we’ll be able to get everybody back so the pressure’s off everyone. It’s not a position we want to be in, either.”
The company’s rig count in the Torquay area (known as Flat Lake) is running around nine drilling rigs. “Definitely, we’re interested in the Torquay area. We do have Torquay Bakken wells there and Ratcliffe Oungre wells, which we really started to build into last year. As well, the recent land sale was publicized as Lodgepole.”
He feels their presence in Carlyle has been important for the community. “I think it’s been a positive spinoff, for the local businesses and people,” he said. “I think it probably helps attract businesses. I think it has to, not unlike it has to in Weyburn, as well. Another part is there’s a fair amount of activity that’s in southeastern Saskatchewan and in Manitoba that you can service from Carlyle.
Asked of the future of Crescent Point in Carlyle, Lequyer said, “I think it’s going to continue to support Crescent Point growth in southeast Saskatchewan. Every year we’ve added regulatory folks, pipeline intergrity people, measurement people. We’ve got land people based in the southeast now.
Lequyer expects 2018 will be a good, busy year, with lots of development.
