Steven Collicutt oozes enthusiasm as he walks through his Edgar Industrial Park shop.
The president of Collicutt Compression Solutions Ltd. lingers beside a massive 5,000-horsepower engine he recently purchased in Europe. Despite its hefty shipping bill, he recognized the value of the equipment, which only had 12,000 operating hours.
Nearby is a 1,100-horsepower engine that Collicutt found in Chicago. In it, he saw another “diamond.”
“I know the value of some of this stuff,” said Collicutt, who as a boy was drawn to the engines powering the big ships to his native Prince Edward Island.
Sure enough, buyers quickly stepped forward to lay claim to both engines.
It’s been a little more than two years since Collicutt inked a deal to sell his former company — Collicutt Energy Services Ltd. — to Finning Canada. Now he’s back in the market, and happy to be there.
“That’s probably what motivated me to keep going, I just love the business.”
Working with his wife, Lorna, and brother Scott, the same partners who helped build Collicutt Energy Services, Collicutt is now laying the foundation for Collicutt Compression Solutions. Several weeks ago, he set up shop in the 72,000-square-foot facilities at 8133 Edgar Industrial Cl. The fledgling company already has a payroll of about 35 and is accumulating parts and equipment for its jump into the natural gas compression business.
The focus will be on parts and service, said Collicutt, with used equipment also re-engineered to customers’ needs.
“That’s how we started (Collicutt Energy Services) in the first 12 years we were in business.”
Collicutt Compression Solutions’ new premises provide further reason for déjà vu.
“We built this facility in ’97 and we sold it to High Arctic (Energy Services),” recalled Collicutt nostalgically.
“When I originally built this place, this is where I thought I would — die.
“It’s a beautiful facility and I know it well, and it’s on a high-load corridor.”
He’s now bought it back, with High Arctic relocated to another location.
Collicutt Compression Solutions has another shop in Rimbey and newly acquired facilities in Grande Prairie.
Collicutt and his wife did a lot of travelling during the past two years, and spent time with each of his 13 brothers and sisters. But suitcases were packed for working trips as well, with Collicutt and his partners operating an emergency power generator business in California.
A Kohler Power Systems distributor for California and Nevada, it provides generator equipment as well as compressors and related services to natural gas producers.
“We’ve expanded down there quite a bit,” said Collicutt, who has about 55 employees in California.
Current low natural gas prices and the resulting slowdown in the industry has enabled Collicutt to pick up some good employees and prepare Collicutt Compression Solutions for the inevitable bounce back.
“Natural gas is still the most environmentally friendly product out there,” he said.
“It will be drilled; it’s just when.”
He’s confident his new company will be an active player when that revival comes. His philosophy has always been to do whatever it takes to enhance the performance of customers’ compression equipment — such as looking beyond the symptoms of malfunctioning machinery to find the underlying cause.
“I always instilled in our staff that that that thing prints money every time it rotates,” he said, explaining that an inactive gas well can cost a client $150,000 a day.
Collicutt Compression Solutions plans to maintain replacement equipment that can be quickly substituted into faulty compressors in the field to minimize downtime. And its re-engineered equipment will help meet the changing needs of customers, such as boosting compressor power to counter dwindling wellhead pressures.
This might have been an ideal time to choose a new city in which to operate — perhaps Calgary, where customers are more accessible. But Collicutt and his family opted to remain in Red Deer.
“This is home.”
But settling on Red Deer doesn’t mean settling for a smaller company, he confirmed.
“It’ll be a bigger business, and it’ll be a world class one too.”
hrichards@www.reddeeradvocate.com