PanCanadian Petroleum's operations in the Weyburn area will not be affected by the recent downsizing the company announced, meaning employees working here will not lose their jobs.
"The main reason why we weren't impacted is twofold," Weyburn PanCanadian supervisor Darcy Cretin said. "We're in the mode of preparing for the CO2 project and couldn't really afford to make any staff cuts and still be able to do all the preparation that we need to do."
The other reason, Cretin says, is because the Weyburn unit has been consistently meeting production targets and maintains one of the lowest operating costs within the company. "That had a lot to do with the fact that we weren't affected," Cretin said.
Nationally the company has had to trim its permanent and contract workforce by about 10 per cent due to weak world oil prices. Two field offices in Alberta will also close, and most of the 60 employees at the two offices will be relocated to other district offices.
Meanwhile, a public hearing hosted by the National Energy Board of Canada (NEB) is scheduled to run on Monday, May 4, either in Weyburn or Regina, to discuss PanCanadian's new CO2 project. The project involves the construction of a U.S. pipeline to supply CO2 to PanCanadian's enhanced oil recovery project in Weyburn. By using pressurized CO2 gas to extract more oil, the pipeline would extend the life of the oil field by 25 years and increase production from 22,700 barrels a day to 30,000 barrels a day.
The NEB is holding the meeting for anyone wishing to voice concerns or raise questions before they give their approval on the project, scheduled to begin in June, 1999.
"They (the NEB) will have a public hearing for anyone that wants to register a question or an intervention into the pipeline," Cretin explained. Intervenors have until Thursday, Feb. 26 to file a submission to the NEB for the hearing.
PanCanadian's Weyburn unit continues to produce around 3,500 cubic metres of medium crude oil per day. Cretin says the company is having good success with in-fill drilling wells and production is well ahead of target.
Low oil prices have yet to be a problem for the Weyburn operation, a benefit Cretin chalks up to the type of oil the company extracts here. While current heavy oil prices are either equal or less than many oil companies' operating costs, light and medium crude oils are still making money.
"It hasn't got to the point where we're losing money; we're still making money," Cretin said. "The fact that we produce a medium crude here, the price is not helping us, but it's not to the point where it's critical yet either."
There was little local interest at a similar public hearing in Regina last week set up by the NEB on a project submitted by Alliance Pipelines. The company has applied to build a 2,335 kilometre, $3.6 billion pipeline from northwest B.C. to the midwest U.S. to move natural gas.
The pipeline, which would run past Stoughton, would include 724 kilometres in Saskatchewan, as well as four compressor stations and two maintenance centres. Several Canadian gas and oil companies would help to construct the pipeline.
Very few public concerns were raised at the hearing. Alliance held an information meeting at Stoughton last spring to inform residents about the pipeline's location as well as some details about the plan to build, and representatives from the company said information nights such as that probably factored in the small turnout at the hearing.
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