In the year ended Dec. 31, Calfrac reported $122.1-million in revenue from Russia, up more than 20 per cent from 2020. That was just over 12 per cent of the company’s sales last year. It says it has three contracts in the country all slated to expire sometime in 2022.
However, Mike Olinek, the company’s chief financial officer, responded to The Globe and Mail’s e-mailed questions Thursday by saying “the company is planning to provide a further update on its Russian operations by early next week, at the latest.” In an e-mailed statement, Computer Modelling said it does not have a Russian office, instead using an independent sales agent. “We have suspended all operations in Russia and are in the process of winding down the relationship with our agent.”, which provides pipeline products and storage tanks, said in a March 10 investor call that its gets less than $5-million of its $1.14-billion in annual revenue from both the Russian and Ukrainian markets combined.
Any energy company that operates globally has to pick and choose among a number of unsavoury jurisdictions. Robert Geddes, the president and chief operating officer of Ensign Energy Services Inc., articulated the idea 13 years ago in a conference call when asked if the company would consider expanding into Russia.
“And so we’re following the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Since 2014, we haven’t spent any real business development efforts trying to grow our businesses in Russia.” “Russia has a large domestic drilling industry, which generally operates at much lower performance levels and standards than we are accustomed to and it would be very difficult for us to be competitive based on price in that market.”