Note: Long-time Estevan based regulator Dean Pylypuk was honoured as a Southeast Saskatchewan Legend on June 5 at the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show in Weyburn. Pylypuk’s biography was read by Minister of Energy and Resources Bronwyn Eyre. A more detailed version will appear in the August edition of Pipeline News.
Before he became the regional manager for Area 4 (southeast Saskatchewan) with the Ministry of Energy and Resources, Dean Pylypuk worked his way up on the drilling rigs, working in western Canada, the Artic Islands and overseas.
Pylypuk grew up in Raymore, where his father was a general contractor and his mother owned and operated a hair dressing salon. Graduating in 1972, he went pipelining for Moosomin-based Shamrock Construction, doing main line rural gasification. That winter he went drilling in the Mackenzie delta, where he was introduced to the oilpatch. He worked with Regent Drilling, and the following summer he drove lowbed truck for United Pipeline.
The Arctic islands were his next destination, working on a drilling rig with Gustavson Artic Drilling on Cameron and Melville Islands for Panarctic Oils. There he worked in the Bent Horn Field. There were 10 to 12 rigs working there in the high arctic, drilling onshore and offshore.
In 1975 Pylypuk married Laura Anderson of Serath, Sask. She was an elementary teacher until they moved overseas.
The Arctic work lasted from 1975 to 1979. From there Pylypuk went to Northern Ireland as a toolpush on a land rig. They weren’t drilling for oil, rather, it was a geothermal energy project. It was the deepest well in Ireland at the time, looking for a hot reservoir at 8,000 feet.
Cornwall, England, was the next stop, another geothermal project for the Cameron School of Mines.
His last overseas work was in in Holland, managing a rig drilling natural gas wells for Petroland, the Dutch subsidiary of Elf Oil out of France.
Pylypuk joined the Petroleum Development Branch of the then Department of Energy and Mines in June 1984, a career that allowed him to be home with his family.
He has worked continuously as a provincial regulator out of the Estevan office and in 2004, he was appointed regional manager.
The job of regulator has been fundamentally the same, no matter who is in government. Pylypuk’s lengthy experience lends to a wider perspective. While some might consider 30 rigs working in the area to be a low number now, he remembers when the same number of rigs was considered boom times.
“Things go up, they go down,” he learned. “You have to be drilling to stay in the game, and it cycles up and down.”
During the following 35 years, Pylypuk saw oil go down to $8 a barrel and up to $147 a barrel. The spike in oil prices coincided with the Bakken boom in southeast Saskatchewan, with a billion dollars in land sales in that region in 2008. They were extremely busy, especially as this was before the implementation of online business processes.
It made for some long days. One week saw 105 drilling rigs working in Area 4, southeast Saskatchewan.
On the regulatory standpoint, Pylypuk has found Saskatchewan has become much more environmentally conscious, an example being the elimination of flare pits in 2001.
One thing that has changed has been the incredible increase in drilling rig efficiency, especially with bit technology and solids control. Wells that took 14 days are now done in five. He saw this himself back when he was drilling in England, when his rig completed a 16-month drilling program in nine months.
A graduate of the University of Regina Extension Program, Pylypuk has two certificates in administration and has been a member of the Saskatchewan Applied Science Technologists and Technicians since 1987.
Pylypuk and Laura have three children and three grandchildren.
