Master Corporal Tom Weedmark completed a tour in Afghanistan with the Canadian Armed Forces before starting a small business in Canada’s oil and gas sector in 2012.  

In partnership with Calgary’s Cabra Consulting, the 38-year-old masters level geologist started XRF Solutions, which takes geological evaluation in the wellsite sector to the next level. Using portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) guns, Weedmark and his business partner Justin Bestplug provide unique chemical analyses that can help oil and gas companies better understand rock formations deep underground. 

“Our whole philosophy was we needed to prove that our technology is valuable and useful,” says Weedmark of the two-person company. “That’s been the story of our small business – proving a technology.”  

According to Canadian Energy Centre research, small businesses make up the vast majority of oil and gas firms in Canada. Approximately 96 per cent of companies have fewer than 100 employees – outpacing the U.S., Norway, and the European Union. 

In Canada, the oil and gas sector has a higher proportion of small businesses than any other major industry, except construction. 

“We’ve always looked at Alberta and western Canada as the Silicon Valley of the energy service space,” says Mark Scholz, CEO of the Canadian Association of Energy Contractors.  

“It’s a very dynamic and very important sector and element of the western Canadian economy.” 

XRF Solutions’ X-ray fluorescence gun in action. Photo by James Snell for the Canadian Energy Centre

At XRF Solutions, not only has Weedmark pushed new technology into a demanding marketplace, but he has also learned how to run a business. Taxes must be filed, books kept, and people paid. He has also learned to manage the cyclical nature of the oil patch. 

“When things are good, it’s really good, and when times are rough, it’s really rough,” he says. “We have to create our own work. I have to do the convincing, although most of our business is word of mouth.” 

A great upside for XRF Solutions is the company has few competitors, says Weedmark – his groundbreaking work with data interpretation and using XRF as a practical tool has carved a path for a few others in Calgary’s XRF industry. 

“Our five-year vision is to keep developing the product,” he says. “I personally love the small business atmosphere.” 

Scholz says he sees a period of sustained growth for the energy services sector, but a lot of issues could impact its potential.  

“I think government policy is one that clearly is going to be something we are looking at very carefully,” he says, “[including] an emissions cap proposed by the federal government and very aggressive emissions targets.” 

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Fresh water use intensity across the oil and gas sector has decreased by 14 per cent since 2017, says a new report by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER).

Of the water used for energy development in Alberta, 82 per cent is recycled.

Driving the numbers is oil sands mining, which uses over 82 per cent of the industry’s fresh water. In 2021, mining companies used less fresh water, and produced more fresh water, than in the previous five years.

Oil sands mining in northeastern Alberta uses heavy equipment to remove oil sands from near-surface deposits and transports the material to facilities that separate bitumen from sand – which requires water.

The lower Athabasca River is the primary source of non-recycled water for oil sands mining, says the AER. Despite the industry’s dependence on the waterway, companies withdraw much less than the weekly limits set by Alberta Environment and Parks.

“They’ve got many new treatment methods that use less river water and more recycled water,” says John Brogly, director of water and tailings with Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance. “Each operator uses a slightly different process.”

In situ oil sands projects – which use drilled oil wells instead of mining – use water in the form of steam and require a decreasing amount of water per barrel of oil after the first few years of their life cycle, says the AER. As the wells mature, they require less water per barrel of oil as the amount of water produced at surface (most of which is recycled) is about the same as the amount of steam injected.

The projects use either steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) or cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) technology to recover oil by injecting steam into geological formations to heat bitumen and reduce its viscosity so it can flow to surface.

The five-year average fresh water use intensity for in situ projects was 0.19 barrels of non-saline water per barrel of oil, which is a 25 per cent decrease from 2017, says the AER. The reduction is due to high rates of produced water recycling and alternative water source use.

“The in situ sector uses almost exclusively water from subsurface aquifers,” says Brogly.

Only 13 per cent of fresh water allocated to all industries in Alberta was designated for oil and gas extraction, and the industry used only 19 per cent of its allocation, says the AER.

“It’s our job to ensure that Alberta’s energy industry uses water resources responsibly and identify where there is room for improvement,” says the AER.

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It’s -20C and the snow is blowing as Nicole Renella loads her vehicle and begins the long drive to an Alberta natural gas drilling site.

The highways, which snake through forests, small towns and prairies, are icy in places. The 36-year-old has already passed one car in the ditch and several ravens feeding on roadkill.

A semi-trailer passes in the opposite lane, momentarily reducing Renella’s visibility. Hours later she turns off the pavement, traverses a backroad, and arrives on site. The drilling rigs are lit up and roaring.  Steam rises into the night. Mobile industrial trailers are lined up. She offloads into her well-equipped living quarters and goes to bed.

The next morning, she meets with the operations team and works a shift surrounded by computer monitors, her microscope and lab supplies – guiding multimillion-dollar wellbores through gas-bearing rock two kilometres deep.

As the sun sets, Renella leaves the drilling control centre and looks to a distant mountain range.

“Trying to explain what I do to my family is always entertaining,” she says. “I just say I look at rocks all day long. They’re accustomed to watching television shows about drilling – but this isn’t Hollywood.”

Horizontal drilling on Nicole Renella’s location near Grande Prairie, Alberta. Photo by MWD technician Harley Alton

Renella grew up in suburbia between Palm Springs and Disneyland. She attended California State University at San Bernadino with the hope of studying pre-med. She took a geology course on a whim – knowing little about natural resources – but wanting to understand earthquake-causing faults.

“It all snowballed from there into joining the geology program,” says Renella, who works for Calgary-based Cabra Consulting. “I was able to stay with the same group of people for four years, and it was small. We graduated with just seven of us.”

According to research compiled by the Canadian Energy Centre, nearly 31 per cent of the jobs in Canada’s energy sector are held by women, while annual wages and salaries for women have increased over 30 per cent since 2009.

Seeking new frontiers, Renella moved to Canada in 2011 and began her career – she was 24, entering a male-dominated workplace. Her key to surviving well-meaning teasing “was not taking anything personally.” She maintained a sense of humour and quick wit.

“Once you show the drilling team the kind of person you are, and the reason you’re out there, it is usually understood quickly,” she says. “I’ve found throughout my years of working in this industry these are really good people. Everyone always wants to collaborate and work as a team.”

Despite the positive aspects of wellsite geology, the separation from friends and family can be difficult – particularly in winter, says Renella.

“The benefit if you work with a really good team, and you trust each other, is it makes the burden a little less,” she says. “Out here, it’s like having a bunch of brothers.”

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The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin contains some of the largest oil and gas reserves on earth, extracted using world-leading knowledge and technology.  

At 1.4 million square kilometres, larger than the entire country of Peru, the vast WCSB accumulation of sedimentary rock stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the Canadian Shield to the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories.

The wedge-shaped geological structure is roughly six kilometres thick under the Rocky Mountains and thins to zero at its eastern margin in Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan.  

Over the decades, geologists like Nicole Renella of Cabra Consulting, along with countless geophysicists, engineers and technologists, have developed sophisticated methods for discovering and producing oil and gas from porous rock.  

“There’s a lot of good that comes out of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin,” said the drilling expert. “We bring materials out of the ground in gas or liquid form that get turned into tires, asphalt, oil products for vehicles, shoes, polyester, clothing – many of the things we use in our daily lives.” 

The energy sector “isn’t even close” to depleting the basin, said Renella, adding it’s important for people to know the high-level science behind oil and gas, as well as the safe production processes that are continuously being upgraded.  

“We can teach other countries that aren’t up to Canadian standards,” she said. “Ultimately, we want a safe and clean environment. At this point, I don’t see a viable energy source that can replace this industry.” 

The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin contains some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world

Two geological formations in the WCSB are driving oil and gas development in Canada today: the McMurray and the Montney. Renella has worked extensively in both. 

The McMurray is known for hosting oil sands mines at shallow depths north of the community of Fort McMurray and thousands of drilled oil wells where the formation is deeper and inaccessible to mining. 

The oil sands is estimated to contain 165 billion barrels of recoverable oil using current technology. Total oil resources are approximately 1.8 trillion barrels. Great care is taken to preserve wildlife habitat and reclaim areas where production is complete, said Renella.  

The Montney is her current area of specialization. The siltstone is endowed with massive quantities of natural gas that are liberated through high-tech horizontal drilling and fracking. The rocks, stretching from west-central Alberta to northeast B.C., also contain oil and natural gas liquids.  

Estimated Montney reserves are in the hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of marketable natural gas and billions of barrels of marketable natural gas liquids and oil – enough energy to power Canada for approximately 140 years. 

“The longevity is phenomenal. A lot of countries can’t even come close to something like that,” said Renella.

“Companies have really put a lot of effort into producing from the Montney and have made a considerable investment. So, it’s an asset that you can’t put a price on.” 

Drilling 3,500-metre Montney wells took up to a month when Renella began her career. As technology evolves, 6,700-metre wells can now be drilled in 10 to 12 days.  

“We can continually tap into it as long as the technology keeps growing and we have the ability to be safer and more efficient,” she said. 

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