The group behind Comtrax Logistics Solutions Inc. is making progress towards the start of construction.
Mark Bratrud is the president of the company, which would operate an agriculture and oil terminal in the Weyburn area. He said that a lot of work has been taking place since late in 2016, when a series of information meetings were held in the southeast.
“We did fundraise for feasibility and planning,” said Bratrud. “We raised about three-quarters of a million dollars last summer, and that money is going towards planning and business development.”
They have some investors from the Estevan area, and from as far away as Lampman and Oxbow. Approximately 60 investors contributed to the $750,000 for feasibility.
Comtrax has negotiated some terms with a few landowners about eight kilometres southeast of Weyburn along Highway 39. It gives them about three kilometres of track frontage, and about 800 acres of development area.
Those agreements with the landowners are currently being finalized.
Bratrud said there aren’t many locations that provide that much track frontage. It has a lot of potentially appealing attributes for CP Rail, as far as having a passing lane for their trains, as well as rail car storage.
“It was important for us to find a location that was going to give us really good access to the oilfield, which that does,” said Bratrud. “We’re right in it there, as well as we won’t lose the advantage of a Weyburn location as an agricultural draw.”
Comtrax has engaged Altus Geomatics to conduct some surveying on the land outside of Weyburn, to get topographies and to look at the suitability of the land. Aecom has been engaged to work on plans for track infrastructure on the property, and where it might fit best.
Evergreen Enviro. Corp. is conducting a three-phase environmental survey on the property to make sure there aren’t any issues from an environmental perspective.
“Assuming that the property is suitable in every aspect that we need it to be, then that will be the focus of their attention for development,” said Bratrud.
He expects the project will be constructed in phases. The goal is to eventually have a 160-car loop track with additional rail car storage, and up to 260-rail car capacity, with a grain facility to go with oil transloading.
Bratrud said Comtrax hopes to do more fundraising in the spring and summer, as long as the results of the studies are satisfactory.
He estimates Comtrax would need $10 million to $20 million to start with, depending on what Comtrax wants to include in the first phase. In the next couple months, Comtrax will be honing in on what phase 1 is going include, and Bratrud wants to get it moving as quickly as possible.
“The differentials on oil are changing rapidly, and the numbers are looking a lot better for oil by rail, so the focus will be getting that rail track laid so we can start doing some transloading at least,” said Bratrud.
But the plan is to get the rail in place, and then to transload what they can.
“Obviously oil is pretty easy to transload, but we can also load grain,” said Bratrud. “We just may not have the grain facility there right off the start, because that’s a lot longer project, and to build a grain elevator could be up to a year or a year-and-a-half just in construction alone, where we potentially could have land development and rail down in a much shorter timeframe.”
Comtrax has a verbal agreement from CP Rail, and it expects a letter of understanding will be coming soon for CP service and work with Comtrax on the railway side, but it has taken some time.
“Environmentally, they have a process that has to be done,” said Bratrud. “We can’t really rush that. There are certain times of the year that they have to do some of their studies. As far as we’re concerned, we’d like to be doing this right now. But there are protocols and things we have to follow to make sure that we’re doing it right, and you can’t really rush it along.”
He hopes they can be turning dirt this summer, or by fall at the latest.
