Shaw Pipe shutting down city facility

After nearly 60 years of operating in Regina, Shaw Pipe is closing up shop.

Shaw Pipe is a part of Shawcor, a Canadian-based international energy infrastructure company. Workers at the Regina facility were notified of the closure on May 19.

“It was not a decision we took lightly,” Paul Pierroz, head of corporate and investor relations with Shawcor, said during a phone interview on Friday.

Shawcor is consolidating its western operations due to the downturn in demand in the oil and gas market caused by the COVID -19 pandemic. The company will instead use its four facilities in Alberta for pipe coating.

Approximately 30 jobs are being lost in the closure. At its peak, the workforce at the facility totalled 200. At the start of 2020, the facility was running at 50 per cent capacity. Pierroz said a small staff of fewer than 10 people will be working at the facility for the foreseeable future. That staff will include a site manager, health and safety, maintenance and a couple other employees.

Workers at Shaw Pipe are represented by the Construction & General Workers Local Union No. 180. A representative for the union declined to comment on the closure.

Shaw Pipe had been providing services mainly to the Evraz steelmaking plant, but also had been serving other customers in Canada and the U.S. Some of those companies included TC Energy, Enbridge and Pembina Pipeline Corporation.

Pierroz said the Regina site had a low backlog of projects prior to the decision to shut down.

“It did not have many projects in the future that it was looking at coating, and the expectation of future work was low due to the decrease in North American demand,” Pierroz said.

Pierroz said there is currently an oversupply in the market for onshore anti-corrosion pipe coating.