Vancouver Sun article
Thursday 5 June 1997
Brigdon Resources No. 7 in Canada
CALGARY - The man who runs Western Canada's fastest growing company
has a simple explanation of his accomplishments. "We just found some
wells and didn't spend too much money doing it," says Phillip Piffer,
president of Calgary's Brigdon Resources.
Piffer is too modest. It's easy to spot a number of reasons why Brigdon, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange, has just earned the number seven spot on Profit magazine's list of the 100 fastest growing companies in Canada.
Brigdon has flourished by following the classic strategy employed by small oil and gas companies for the past decade: develop expertise in a few geographic areas and stick to those areas.
The company has used the latest seismic techniques to find 20 billion cubic feet of proven gas reserves overlooked by other companies. And Piffer had the courage to reinvest virtually all Brigdon's profits to expand the company's holdings.
This way of doing business produced revenue growth from $100,000 in 1991 to $3.26 million in 1996, a 3,150 per cent increase.
The company made its mark with exploration success in a single area, the Buffalo Lake play just north of Stettler.
"If you can interpret the 3-D seismic correctly, it will put you in the right spot,"Piffer says.
"We explore for quality. In this area, the odds are you are going to find pay in any one of five or six zones, but to find a really good quantity you need a combination of luck and really good seismic interpretation."
Piffer, 52, is a Central High School grad who went to work as a clerk with TransAlta Utilities while he studied nights to earn a Certified Management Accountant's designation. He later worked as staff economist for Canadian Superior Oil and earned an MBA from the University of Calgary in 1980.
In 1988 Piffer, was hired as chief financial officer of near bankrupt Nortek Energy Corp. Former premier Don Getty had just resigned as president of the company to return to politics.
Piffer managed to return the company's key oilfield electrical contracting business, Sparrow Electric, to profitability and sell it to Larry Ryckman. The company became part of Westgroup Corporations Inc. Ryckman was fined $250,000 and barred from trading for 18 years for manipulating Westgroup shares.
In 1991 Piffer bought back some Nortek stock and changed the company's
name to Brigdon.
The Buffalo Lake play had been one of Renaissance Energy's first big
projects. Renaissance had built a 14-mile gas pipeline system, but had
suspended or abandoned 11 wells when the area caught the attention of
Piffer and geological engineer Fred Majocha.
"We looked at some tremendous logs on suspended or abandoned wells
and felt the area had been ignored and neglected in recent times so we put together an offer to Renaissance to buy their interest in the area and they accepted," Piffer remembers.
Brigdon paid $125,000 for an average 35 per cent interest in the wells, pipeline and rights to develop 5,000 acres of land. The company re-entered two wells and produced just a whiff of gas during the next two years. Then its clever geological work paid off. In 1994 the Brigdon Leahurst discovery well produced 4.5 million cubic feet a day,
"Our first discovery well just exploded the area and opened up the play," Piffer says. "The area had been completely inactive from 1985 to 1994. I wouldn't be surprised if there have been 100 wells drilled since then."
Reinvesting about $12 million to buy out partners and acquire more
acreage, Brigdon has expanded its Buffalo Lake holdings to an average 87 per cent interest in seven gas wells, four oil wells, two gas plants, the pipeline and 32,000 gross acres of land.
The company is now producing about 7.5 million cubic feet of gas and 50 barrels of oil daily and has budgeted $4.1 million to drill at least 10 wells at Buffalo Lake this year. Piffer forecasts average production of 16.8 million cubic feet a day this year.
"The only future for these little companies is you have to grow and you have to grow fast," he says. "In five years, we'll either be 15 to 20 times the size we are now or we won't exist." |
