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Canadian oil and fuel firms have maintained some resilience even amid current international turmoil as their southern neighbour initiates a commerce struggle and inventory markets and crude costs slide.
Saturn Oil and Gas, Stampede Drilling and Arrow Exploration are among the many 100 most quickly rising firms within the Americas, in keeping with a 2025 Monetary Instances rating. Saturn was the trade’s quickest rising firm within the area, putting fifth general, after it posted a compound annual progress charge of 353 per cent between 2020 and 2023.
The sturdy progress comes at a time when Canada is debating easy methods to produce extra vitality for the US and past. “The basics are sturdy; the enterprise case is there,” Lisa Baiton, the chief government of Canadian Affiliation of Petroleum Producers, mentioned at an investor convention in Toronto in April.
Stampede and Arrow are banking on Canada’s renewed curiosity in oil and fuel together with a push to diversify markets in response to the Trump administration’s threatened tariffs and the nation’s over-reliance on the US. Stampede had 14 out of its 19 rigs operational within the first quarter whereas Arrow has elevated from 13 initiatives in 2024 to plans to drill 23 wells this yr.
Oil costs nevertheless have fallen in current months, with a greater than 10 per cent drop for the reason that starting of April, as President Donald Trump has issued quite a lot of tariff threats.
Calgary-based John Jeffrey, Saturn’s chief government, factors to a disciplined company hedging technique that has mitigated dangers in opposition to oil worth volatility and offered the corporate with some monetary stability regardless of the market turbulence.
“In 2022, when oil was $120 a barrel, we hedged out three years of manufacturing as a result of we actually preferred that worth,” Jeffrey says. “Certain sufficient, oil got here down, and that hedge began paying an enormous amount of cash.”
Saturn locks in oil and pure fuel costs on a portion of manufacturing, utilizing monetary spinoff commodity contracts, usually futures, choices, or swaps, Jeffrey says.
This “prudent danger strategy” together with vital progress in belongings, manufacturing and money circulate since 2020 has helped insulate the corporate from Trump’s commerce insurance policies or the impression of sanctions on Russian crude exports, he says. Saturn final yr acquired more assets in Saskatchewan at a worth of $525mn.
In March, Trump imposed quite a lot of tariffs on Canadian items, together with a ten per cent levy on vitality and potash exports. He backtracked quickly after with an exemption through the US, Canada and Mexico commerce settlement. Weeks later his plans for widespread tariffs sparked a two-day $5.4tn international market rout that depressed Saturn’s share worth by 12 per cent.
“I hate tariffs; [they’re] going to harm plenty of Canadian households,” Jeffrey says. However, “these tariffs have performed one factor and that’s pushed down the Canadian greenback. I receives a commission in US [currency].”
A weak Canadian greenback, which has dropped on account of US tariffs, is benefiting these within the trade who’ve extra scope to pay down debt and canopy operating prices and salaries from income earned in US forex.
Canada, which has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, is the largest overseas provider to the US, accounting for about 60 per cent of its oil imports. These have grow to be more and more essential to ageing US oil refineries, which have been constructed to deal with heavier grades of crude.
About 80 per cent of Saturn’s oil reserves are lighter crude from Saskatchewan province whereas the remainder is from neighbouring Alberta, which is taken into account dwelling to Canada’s petroleum trade.
“Saskatchewan is a significant oil producer,” says Heather Exner-Pirot, the director of vitality, pure assets and surroundings on the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa. If the province “have been an Opec nation it might rank eleventh in manufacturing”.
Saturn’s manufacturing has soared from 7,500 barrels a day in 2022 to 41,900 bpd on the finish of 2024. Jeffery says the benefit of sunshine crude oil is decrease capital expenditures and working prices.
“If we get up and it’s $50 oil tomorrow, we’ll simply cease drilling,” he says. “Saturn has no drilling commitments or obligations, and the oil, it’s not going wherever.”
Belt-tightening has “decreased their transportation prices by 36 per cent during the last 4 years”, Jeffery provides.
Saturn has had luck too. In February 2022, it purchased the Ridgeback Resources for $525mn when the asking worth was $1bn. “We’ve been fortunate within the sense that we’ve had the power to get these belongings at very low costs.”
