ESTEVAN — Warren Waldegger has long been a familiar face in the southeast Saskatchewan oilpatch, but the energy sector was not his initial career choice.
Speaking at the Estevan Chamber of Commerce’s monthly Coffee Talk May 6 at the Days Inn’s Taylorton Room, Waldegger, the president and CEO of Bent Shed Oil Ltd., told the crowd of community and business leaders the oil industry picked him. He was originally accepted into pharmacy school, but took a year off school, worked some oilfield jobs in the community and went into mechanical engineering instead, leading to his career in the patch.
Three decades later, he’s still in the business and says it’s a great industry with great people.
He noted he learned lessons that he carried into the patch while cooking chicken at KFC and pumping fuel at Fas Gas, because those jobs taught him about serving people and doing the necessary work.
“I don’t think there is any job too big or too small when you’re in the service industry, and I always kept that with any of my companies. If there was a dirty job to do, I never looked for somebody else to do the job, I always looked to do the job myself," he said.
He also spent a lot of time at the golf course growing up, allowing him to meet leaders in the oilpatch who helped with his introduction to the industry.
“I always felt that there was a door open because of those relationships,” said Waldegger.
After graduating university, he was working at the golf course when the manager of Producers Pipeline asked him to drop off a resumé. Waldegger was hired as a junior engineer and then looked after new pipelines and customer connections.
“I spent five years with Producers Pipelines and Enbridge,” said Waldegger, noting it proved to be a great start to his career, thanks to the company’s culture.
He then left to work for Ron Wanner’s group of companies at a time when oil was under $20 per barrel. Waldegger said he had a “dynamic” relationship with Wanner, as they balanced each other well, developed a lot of respect for each other and accomplished a lot of great things together.
Waldegger brought a graph that showed the price of oil during his career, illustrating how it’s not stable. For example, he noted during the 2008 Great Recession — when Waldegger was already working exclusively for T-Bird Oil — the company lost about 50 days of revenue, which was several million dollars of revenue. It had been at 1,500 barrels of oil per day earlier in the year, which was peak production.
“We probably went down from 1,500 … to 600 barrels per day. That’s one thing about this industry. You are battling decline. Especially if you are active with the drill bit," he said.
Eventually the company reached 800-900 barrels per day and it was sold to Crescent Point Energy before the price of oil plunged in 2014.
A transition plan to Fire Sky Energy, where he was the president and CEO, occurred before the sale of T-Bird, he said, allowing the staff to remain with Fire Sky after T-Bird’s sale.
He noted he has had opportunities to leave the area, but has no intentions of departing. He also encourages young people to enter the sector.
Waldegger also provided a look at the history of the patch and a look at current oil prices during his speech. Monica Osborn with the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show promoted the upcoming event during the meeting.
SaskToday will have stories on these speeches during the coming days.
