Weyburn – Glen Grimes was honoured as a Southeast Saskatchewan Legend during the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show on June 5. Here is his biography, as read by Minister of Energy and Resources Bronwyn Eyre:
After years working in the electrical field, Glen Grimes developed the Kisbey gas plant, one of the first gas plants built in the region in many years.
Glen Grimes was born in 1946 to Jack and Jean Grimes in Lampman, Saskatchewan. He was the eldest of seven siblings, six boys and one girl.
Glen attended Lampman School. In 1963 he took a nine-month course in electrical construction at Saskatchewan Technical Institute in Moose Jaw. Afterwards he went to work for Bouchard Electric in Estevan.
He left Bouchard Electric for the big money in the oilpatch, working on a drilling rig for Commonwealth Drilling. He was roughnecking for $1.50 an hour. Glen worked on drilling rigs for the next two years for different drilling companies, depending on what companies were working at the time.
In the spring of 1967 after an extended road ban, Glen made a career change and went to work for a power line contractor. It was building a transmission power line from Estevan to Tantalon for a new Potash mine that was being built there. Powerline work took him all over Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and the Northwest Territories.
In 1970 he went to work For Calgary Power in Drayton Valley, Alberta, where he was involved in construction and maintaining the power grid in the Drayton Valley-Lodgepole oilfield.
In 1971 he transferred to Edmonton and was in charge of maintenance on all transmission lines north of Red Deer. This position involved extensive time in helicopters patrolling power lines from Red Deer to North of Edmonton on the power grid. Over the next five years he logged over one thousand hours as a patrolman in helicopters patrolling these lines.
In 1972 Glen married Bev Stark from lnnisfail, Alberta. They purchased our first home in Saint Albert where Bev pursued her career as a registered nurse.
In 1975 their son Michael was born in St. Albert. In 1976 moved back to Lampman where they started up Petro Care Electric. They operated that firm through the 70s and 80s, specializing in gas plant construction and maintenance. Dome Petroleum was their main customer.
Daughter Alenna was born in 1979.
In 1980 along with a partner Glen started up Gold West Wireline, a downhole electric line wireline business. In the late 1980s this was sold to Computalog.
During these years they also operated a small farm by today standards.
In 1990 after dissolving their electrical business Glen went to work for Sask Power as assistant district operator in Lampman. The majority of his time was spent maintaining the power system in the Lampman-Frobisher-Stoughton oilfield.
In 1998 Glen started working on an idea he had researched over several years. That was to process the natural Gas that was being flared off in southeast Saskatchewan.
In 1999 he hired Darcy Engineering out of Calgary to design a small gas plant that would process approximately 2.5 million cubic feet of sour high liquid flare gas in the Kisbey area.
After getting the initial budget and a list of used equipment that could be used for this facility he went to work finding investors for this project. That turned out to be the fastest easiest part of the whole project.
Up until that time, southeast Saskatchewan had few gas plants besides the larger Steelman and Nottingham plants.
In the spring of 2000 he began construction on this facility at 5-13-08-06-W2. Startup began in August with being in full operation by early September of 2000. Glen continued to operate this plant until it was sold to a joint venture of Sask Energy and Atco Midstream in November of 2007.
After the Grimes family retired to Kenosee Lake where they enjoy golfing in the summer and spending their winters in Arizona. Their two children live in Calgary and both of their families work in the oilfield.
