BIG BOOM changing with the times


and gas industry. Big Boom Picker and Oil Field Service provides heavy hauling and lift- ing, metal shearing and shredding, and custom cutting. “I sort of had to diversify when the meltdown of 2014 hit. There was no oil- field stuff going on. I didn’t do one oil- field job in four years,” said Mills of Big Boom Picker and Oilfield Services, one of three companies with a couple of other off shoots with Oilfield Anything. “Up until that point, that was all I was doing. I was doing metal management, landfills, farm clean ups. Lots of recy- cling. Cleaning up scrap metal, chop- ping it up into prepared and hauling it into the mill so it could be melted down and recycled into pipe or whatever.” Mills started in the scrap business in 2004 by accident. A customer he was doing a lot of crane/hoisting work for, approached him, having a bunch of steel to chop up and get rid of. Having been in the scrap metal busi-


E


ness, Mills saw an opportunity on cut- ting down on waste, where much like a garage sale, what one’s man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Instead of automatically scrapping something, if there was still some life left in it, it could be sold on a secondary market with used equipment. “People know how much they can


save by buying used equipment. There is cost saving to be had re-purposing equipment. Because of the economy the 30 - insight magazine november 2019


arl Mills is a man who has had to adapt in making a liv- ing for his family and his crew, seeing the full circle of life when it comes to the oil


last four years, people have had to get smarter and more in tune with that to find cost savings where they can,” said Mills.


Mills has worked all over Western Canada to Manitoba, where now Mills has expanded to the States to find cus- tomers in places like Texas, North Dakota and Wyoming. “Nobody is doing gas plays up here right now because of the cost of natu- ral gas.With the economic meltdown of 2008/2009, gas prices have been up and down within 50 or 60 cents. It’s the only commodity I’ve seen that has totally flat-lined since then. Other commodi- ties have been really volatile, be it pork rinds or oranges or whatever. But the cost of natural gas, because of the worldwide glut, it has just been a flat line,” said Mills. One of Mills’ biggest customers as a subcontractor right now is the Orphan Well Association for Alberta and Saskatchewan. “It is mind boggling how many aban- doned wells are out there,” said Mills. Mills’ business model, when he first


started his latest venture, was buying equipment and pipe off of big compa- nies like CNRL and Encana and then selling it to little guys. “With the Orphan Well Association,


the whole thing has sort of reversed. Now the guys I used to sell to, I’m now


BY GREG PRICE insight magazine


buying off of and I have to find new markets to sell that stuff to,” said Mills. “The Redwater (Supreme Court Decision for environmental responsibil- ities) has been a real turning point for my business.” If it is a piece of oilfield equipment, Mills has likely found a way to re-pur- pose it, be it compressors, tanks, pump jacks, and electrical equipment. “Obsolescence is a big factor. A lot of these wells, the stuff might work on that specific site, but to re-purpose it in this day and age, it may not be an option. It’s just junk. Sometimes the option is to chop that stuff up and get rid of it and get it off the market,” said Mills.


Mills admits it has been a learning


curve where he tries to find buyers for re-purposed equipment that he hasn’t chopped up and sent to the scrap yard/mill. He has sat on equipment for two to three years. “I have storage, but there has been times that just because of sheer volume of jobs I go to and I don’t have the stor- age, where I’ve chopped up stuff that could be re-purposed, but I just don’t have the market for it at that time and I have to make the decision on whether it’s worth it for me to sit on it,” said Mills. “I’m getting better and better at it (knowing value of equipment and possibility of re-purposing). It’s playing percentages, it’s gambling. There are times I’ve scrapped something, chop it up and hauled it to the mill. I’ll get a call a week later asking me if I have the thing I just chopped up.” Mills had been doing crane work help- ing set up oil companies on sites,


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