From www.theobserver.ca The Observer
Sarnia-Lambton’s industrial manufacturers are set to make a sales pitch Friday in Calgary to as many as 600 representatives of Canada’s oil business.
Paul Healy, chairperson of the Sarnia Lambton Industrial Alliance, and Dave Moody, with the Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership, will speak at a conference of the Canadian Heavy Oil Association about Chemical Valley fabrication firms, machine shops, skilled trades, engineering and environmental services firms eager to bid for work in Western Canada.
Moody said the partnership has attended oil conferences in the west before but “this is the first time that we’ve been invited out as speakers.”
An article about Sarnia-Lambton’s efforts to attract work in the oil patch published recently in the Daily Oil Bulletin caught the attention of conference organizers, Moody said.
It followed a stop by a delegation with the Calgary-based In Situ Oil Sands Alliance made earlier this year in Sarnia.
Expansion in the oil sands is expected to continue for decades but fabricators in western Canada can’t meet all of the demand.
“We have a lot of unemployment here in the skilled trades that are an exact match to what’s needed out there,” Moody said.
The alliance came together in Sarnia-Lambton to look for ways to attract customers beyond Chemical Valley, where demand has been shrinking.
Building pieces of oil facilities in modules to be shipped west is an option the group of 40 companies has been pursuing.
“We’ve got a lot of capabilities here, a lot of capacity here,” Moody said.
He and Healy will make a 20-minute presentation during a Friday morning conference session on addressing capital costs.
Moody said they will spread the word about the Chemical Valley “and why it is that our companies here already know about what’s needed in the oil business.”
He noted the Daily Oil Bulletin reporter and one of the conference organizers are both originally from Sarnia.
Sarnia-Lambton has many of those connections in Alberta, he said. “Unfortunately there are also many that have little or no idea that we are in the business.”
Moody said there is a lot of bidding going on now by local companies for work in the oil patch.
“A year or so ago, we were trying to break the glass ceiling to even get on the bidders’ list,” he said.
“We consider it a real breakthrough, and I understand a number of companies are getting close.”
The alliance is awaiting a report it commissioned, with financial help from Lambton County, from MIG Engineering to identify a transportation corridor from the fabrication shops to the St. Clair River. It will also identify improvements needed on the route.
“Hopefully that will lead to getting some infrastructure money to make those improvements,” Moody said.
Prefabricated modules used in oil facility construction are too large to move by rail. The Port of Sarnia, and the roads leading to it, also can’t accommodate them.
That report is scheduled to be delivered to the alliance at the end of the month, Moody said.