Canadian Oil Show Runs Out of Gas

Marshal Mills said it wasn't too long after the doors opened on the first day of the Rig Expo that he knew something was wrong.

The vice president of Midland, Texas-based D-Jax Corp. was one of the 60 exhibitors who had signed on for the launch of the show geared toward the oil field industry, scheduled May 28-29 at the Capri Centre in Red Deer, Alberta.

“They were charging admission to get in, which was a flag,” Mills said. “I've never been to an oil show that charged admission.”

To top it off, the admission was pretty steep: $120 or $20 with a can of food.

The second flag was an even bigger one.

“Most of the time when a tradeshow opens, there's people waiting to get in,” Mills said. “No one was there. All the exhibitors were walking around doing nothing. What do we do? Play Tiddlywinks?”

Things went downhill from there. By the end of the first day, according to Mills, fewer than 30 attendees had shown up, and the show manager, Paul Pearson, president of Pro Tech Intl., was nowhere to be found.

“I've never seen anything like it,” said Bud Rich, salesperson for British Columbia-based T.A. Structures. “The first day of the show rolls around, and there weren't a lot of people coming in. It wasn't advertised really well.”

When attendees still failed to appear on the second day of the show, both Rich and Mills said they cut their losses and packed up by mid-afternoon.

“Word had started to spread that (the show) was a bit of a scam,” Rich added.

Pearson, on the other hand, insisted that not only was the show legitimate, but also that he had advertised it heavily. He blamed the low attendance on “incredibly bad timing.”

He said he did his research and, though he knew there was a big show scheduled just two weeks later in Edmonton, Alberta, a 90-minute drive away (the biennial Global Petroleum Show, typically No. 1 on the TSW Canadian 50), there wasn't one located in the Red Deer area.

“I thought a rig expo dedicated to the drilling industry was something Alberta could use,” Pearson said. “As the show got closer, I purchased full-page ads in the local newspaper in Red Deer and did editorials in three or four of its sister publications.”

One thing he said he couldn't control was the weather. Alberta experienced an unusually wet spring, and the oil fields were all but shut down, what Pearson said he thought was a perfect time to hold a show for people with time on their hands. But two days before the show opened, the sun came out for the first time in months, he added, and everyone went back to work.

“I noticed that one major exhibitor that was supposed to be setting up a 200-foot rig beforehand wasn't there,” Pearson said. “I called him, and they said they wouldn't be able to bring the rig. I said, 'You have to, I've sold booth space around it.' The general manager told me, 'It's been raining here for two months, and we need the rig to go drilling.' They make $50,000 a day for that rig.”

Pearson said that, like his exhibitors, he knew the show was in trouble early on. Opposed to the 50-plus shows Pearson said he had managed in the past, this one didn't have a line of people waiting to get in on the first day. “Twenty-two people came in the next three to four hours,” he added. “It was a disaster. We thought there would be 3,000 to 4,000 people.”

He admitted that, with the show such a failure, exhibitors came looking for him. “There was a lot of pressure from exhibitors, so I went to my room,” Pearson said. “I have a heart condition, and I took my medicine.”

When he checked his phone messages later, he added, “there was a lot of cussing and swearing, and 20 people had called.” Worried about his safety, Pearson said he called his family to pick him up and take him home.

Once Pearson left the premises, exhibitors went to Tim Pasutto, general manager of the Capri Centre, with their complaints. “They were looking for someone to talk to,” Pasutto said. “Unfortunately, (Pearson) wasn't there to address their concerns, and he should've been.”

Why exactly the show failed, he added, would be speculation on his part, but he did support Pearson's claim that everyone in the oil industry was most likely out working in the fields. “The timing probably couldn't have been worse for him,” Pasutto said.

In the meantime, exhibitors such as Rich and Mills have been left in the dark as far as any reimbursement of their booth fees. “You could've fired a cannon down the hallway and not hit anyone at times,” Rich said.

Mills, who paid $2,500 for his 10'x10' booth, added, “We are looking into getting the booth fee back, but supposedly this guy said he has no money.”

Pearson said he made $127,000 from booth sales, all of which went to overhead before the show even started. “When the show opened, we were a little bit in the hole,” he added.

Pearson said he planned to pay back booth fees to some, but not all, exhibitors. “We rented the building, we advertised the show, we did everything we could,” he added. “You pay your money and take your chances.”