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Canadian oil and gas companies have maintained some resilience even amid recent global turmoil as their southern neighbour initiates a trade war and stock markets and crude prices slide.
Saturn Oil and Gas, Stampede Drilling and Arrow Exploration are among the 100 most rapidly growing companies in the Americas, according to a 2025 Financial Times ranking. Saturn was the industry’s fastest growing company in the region, placing fifth overall, after it posted a compound annual growth rate of 353 per cent between 2020 and 2023.
The robust growth comes at a time when Canada is debating how to produce more energy for the US and beyond. “The fundamentals are strong; the business case is there,” Lisa Baiton, the chief executive of Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said at an investor conference in Toronto in April.
Stampede and Arrow are banking on Canada’s renewed interest in oil and gas along with a push to diversify markets in response to the Trump administration’s threatened tariffs and the country’s over-reliance on the US. Stampede had 14 out of its 19 rigs operational in the first quarter while Arrow has increased from 13 projects in 2024 to plans to drill 23 wells this year.
Oil prices however have fallen in recent months, with a more than 10 per cent drop since the beginning of April, as President Donald Trump has issued a number of tariff threats.
Calgary-based John Jeffrey, Saturn’s chief executive, points to a disciplined corporate hedging strategy that has mitigated risks against oil price volatility and provided the company with some financial stability despite 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 natural gas prices on a portion of production, using financial derivative commodity contracts, typically futures, options, or swaps, Jeffrey says.
This “prudent risk approach” along with significant growth in assets, production and cash flow since 2020 has helped insulate the company from Trump’s trade policies or the impact of sanctions on Russian crude exports, he says. Saturn last year acquired more assets in Saskatchewan at a price of $525mn.
In March, Trump imposed a number of tariffs on Canadian goods, including a 10 per cent levy on energy and potash exports. He backtracked soon after with an exemption via the US, Canada and Mexico trade agreement. Weeks later his plans for widespread tariffs sparked a two-day $5.4tn global market rout that depressed Saturn’s share price by 12 per cent.
“I hate tariffs; [they’re] going to hurt a lot of Canadian families,” Jeffrey says. But, “these tariffs have done one thing and that’s driven down the Canadian dollar. I get paid in US [currency].”
A weak Canadian dollar, which has dropped due to US tariffs, is benefiting those in the industry who have more scope to pay down debt and cover running costs and salaries from revenue earned in US currency.
Canada, which has the world’s third-largest oil reserves, is the biggest foreign supplier to the US, accounting for about 60 per cent of its oil imports. These have become increasingly important to ageing US oil refineries, which were built to handle heavier grades of crude.
About 80 per cent of Saturn’s oil reserves are lighter crude from Saskatchewan province while the rest is from neighbouring Alberta, which is considered home to Canada’s petroleum industry.
“Saskatchewan is a major oil producer,” says Heather Exner-Pirot, the director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa. If the province “were an Opec nation it would rank 11th in production”.
Saturn’s production has soared from 7,500 barrels a day in 2022 to 41,900 bpd at the end of 2024. Jeffery says the advantage of light crude oil is lower capital expenditures and operating costs.
“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 adds.
Saturn has had luck too. In February 2022, it bought the Ridgeback Resources for $525mn when the asking price was $1bn. “We’ve been lucky in the sense that we’ve had the ability to get these assets at very low prices.”
https://www.ft.com/content/8edcd183-3504-42c0-893d-613e42730b7d
