Sask. oil patch concerned about tariff threat more than increased U.S. drilling

Some ears in Saskatchewan’s oil patch may have perked up on Monday when just inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump started talking about moving things around to allow more drilling for oil and gas in the U.S. — telling companies to “drill, baby, drill.”

Jeff Richards, Weyburn’s mayor, said it could be a positive in Saskatchewan and that renewed confidence in the oil and gas sector is long overdue.

“If we see our neighbours to the south exhibiting that renewed confidence in the sector that will trickle up to us as well, which may incite some more investment in that sector here in oil and gas as well, which would be great,” said Richards.

He said he thinks the U.S. will always be eager for Canadian energy, though if increased drilling there were to lower the oil price or interest in Canadian exports, Richards believes other parts of the world would be eager for Canadian oil and gas.

Just an hour down the road in Estevan, Mayor Tony Sernick said he didn’t think there would be a direct effect on Canada if the U.S. untethered oil and gas production.

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“Right now (“drill, baby, drill” is) kind of more of a pump the crowd up kind of thing because actually, currently right now the U.S. is at record production and they’re pretty busy down there already,” said Sernick

He wasn’t worried about the price of oil or a reduction in Canadian exports to the U.S., saying he thinks what’s flowing will continue to flow, and that record production in the U.S. right now hasn’t affected the price very much.

What both Sernick and Richards have been paying more attention to is the threat of Trump tariffs and a trade war with the U.S. — they said shutting off the taps to the U.S. as some sort of retaliation would be bad for Saskatchewan and Canada.

“We’ll pay very close attention to how this trade war or these tariffs play out, but at the end of the day we’re sort of at the mercy of our federal government’s ability to work with the Trump administration and we will encourage them, to the extent that we can, to be diligent here, because it is a risk, for sure,” said Richards.

Sernick estimated the oil and gas industry in southeastern Saskatchewan is worth about 50,000 jobs.

Trump told reporters late Monday that he plans to implement his 25 per cent tariff on imports from Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1.