The Petroleum Services Association of Canada has revised the number of wells drilled across Canada for this year, decreasing the number by 1,400 wells, to 3,100. That’s a drop of 31 per cent from the original forecast last October. It’s the lowest activity in decades.

PSAC Interim President and CEO Elizabeth Aquin says, “Punishing blows continue to batter the health of this vital industry.” 2020 began on a promising note but Aquin says, “Eroding investor confidence from protests and blockades of the Coastal GasLink Pipeline, cancellation of Teck’s Frontier Oil Sands project, and withdrawal of investment in the Energy Saguenay LNG facility, began to cast a shadow on the promising start.”

Then there was what she calls the demand destruction from measures to combat COVID-19, compounded by a collapse in prices from a poorly timed Russia-Saudi price war. The result is over $7 billion of capital investment cancelled from budgets to date.

In Saskatchewan, the revised forecast sits at 1,140 sells which is down 655 from the original forecast.