SADDLE LAKE – Like many players in the oilfield industry, Saddle Lake Cree Nation's Peyasew Oilfield Services continues to diversify its operations to stay ahead of the game.
Peyasew Oilfield Services was previously called the Saddle Lake Gas and Oil around the mid-90s.
The business is owned and operated by Saddle Lake Cree Nation, with the Nation as its chief shareholder. While Saddle Lake’s Public Works deals with on-reserve projects, Peyasew deals with clients and partners such as Ridgeline Canada and ATCO, according to Jordie Houle, General Manager, Peyasew Oilfield Services.
“Essentially, we are a band business,” said Houle, explaining the company’s profits go back into the band.
Since the company’s inception, it has diversified into other ventures, such as general construction and roadbuilding. “We started with one grader, and we were helping with the lease roads on our reserve,” said Houle.
“Since then, we started getting more equipment,” he said, enabling the company to do more projects and expand.
“But originally, our bread and butter had been dealing with [road] leases and clearings,” he said.
Kevin Steinhauer, Corporate Safety Manager, Peyasew Oilfield Services, said one of the big things the company does includes reclamation, where “we go to these old oil and gas lease sites, and we put them back into farmland.”
Steinhauer said the company also has multiple divisions, including a trucking division hauling various types of minerals such as “gravel and various fluids.”
Challenges
Just like many other businesses, Houle said the pandemic impacted the company’s operations. “But we are small and diversified,” he said, explaining Saddle Lake tasked the company with working as COVID-19 security for the Nation, where they set up a new division to work on checkpoints to make sure the COVID-19 virus wasn’t getting in or out of the Nation.
“So that helped us out,” he said, and now that the restrictions have been lifted, “we’re starting to see more of our clientele coming back to us.” Houle said the company is also seeing an “up-turn” where many of their customers are seeking for themselves an “Indigenous component,” contributing to the company’s growth.
Indigenous Involvement in the Oil and Gas Industry
Steinhauer said that among the biggest challenges the company is facing is still finding a proper workforce, including people trained as class-one drivers, as well procuring more heavy equipment and materials. The company deals with projects which require materials that may take months to acquire since the pandemic.
“So, there are some challenges with the chain supply and with the workforce,” he said.
Despite the challenges, Steinhauer said that Peyasew’s main goals involve keeping people employed, especially Saddle Lake’s band members.
He said First Nations involvement is critical to the province’s oil and gas industry “because we are closely connected with the land,” and “it’s important that these projects now have some part of Aboriginal involvement.”
Future plans
According to Houle, the company doubled its operations in the last five years. The keys to the company’s success, he said, include “always re-investing in ourselves, in our company, in our equipment, and our people.”
This also involves initiatives like the company’s heavy-duty equipment training operating course, “where we train about ten people every year,” which they then hire later on.
“We’re always going to re-invest, buy more equipment, do bigger jobs, hire more people,” said Houle on the company’s future, which can result in potential expansion into other ventures such as security, training, more construction involvement and engineering. “The sky’s the limit.”
“That’s sort of our method to success, and we’re always getting ready for our clientele,” said Houle, which allows the company to quickly jump on opportunities.
He concluded by thanking Peyasew’s employees, Saddle Lake’s leaders and counsellors “because they are who keep us together – we’re here for them.”
