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Canadian oil and fuel corporations have maintained some resilience even amid latest international turmoil as their southern neighbour initiates a commerce struggle and inventory markets and crude costs slide.
Saturn Oil and Gasoline, Stampede Drilling and Arrow Exploration are among the many 100 most quickly rising corporations within the Americas, based on a 2025 Monetary Instances rating. Saturn was the business’s quickest rising firm within the area, putting fifth total, after it posted a compound annual development fee of 353 per cent between 2020 and 2023.
The strong development comes at a time when Canada is debating tips on how to produce extra vitality for the US and past. “The fundamentals are strong; the business case is there,” Lisa Baiton, the chief govt 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 tasks in 2024 to plans to drill 23 wells this 12 months.
Oil costs nonetheless have fallen in latest months, with a greater than 10 per cent drop because the starting of April, as President Donald Trump has issued a lot of tariff threats.
Calgary-based John Jeffrey, Saturn’s chief govt, factors to a disciplined company hedging technique that has mitigated dangers in opposition to oil worth volatility and supplied 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 production because we really liked that price,” Jeffrey says. “Sure enough, oil came down, and that hedge started paying a huge amount of money.”
Saturn locks in oil and pure fuel costs on a portion of manufacturing, utilizing monetary by-product commodity contracts, sometimes futures, choices, or swaps, Jeffrey says.
This “prudent risk approach” together with important development in property, manufacturing and money circulation since 2020 has helped insulate the corporate from Trump’s commerce insurance policies or the influence of sanctions on Russian crude exports, he says. Saturn final 12 months acquired extra property in Saskatchewan at a worth of $525mn.
In March, Trump imposed 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 by way of 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 hurt a lot of Canadian families,” Jeffrey says. However, “these tariffs have done one thing and that’s driven down the Canadian dollar. I get paid in US [currency].”
A weak Canadian greenback, which has dropped because of US tariffs, is benefiting these within the business 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 most important overseas provider to the US, accounting for about 60 per cent of its oil imports. These have grow to be more and more necessary to ageing US oil refineries, which had 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 house to Canada’s petroleum business.
“Saskatchewan is a major oil producer,” says Heather Exner-Pirot, the director of vitality, pure sources and setting on the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa. If the province “were an Opec nation it would rank 11th in production”.
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 wake up and it’s $50 oil tomorrow, we’ll just stop drilling,” he says. “Saturn has no drilling commitments or obligations, and the oil, it’s not going anywhere.”
Belt-tightening has “reduced their transportation costs by 36 per cent over the last four years”, Jeffery provides.
Saturn has had luck too. In February 2022, it purchased the Ridgeback Sources for $525mn when the asking worth was $1bn. “We’ve been lucky in the sense that we’ve had the ability to get these assets at very low prices.”
