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The earlier shale-gas boom from fracking boosted production so much that it drove prices too low for years to justify spending on gas drilling. Increased production from the Bakken, Cardium, Viking and Montney shale formations reversed a decade-long slide in conventional oil production in Western Canada. Tight oil production in Canada has doubled since 2011, according to the National Energy Board, surpassing 400,000 barrels a day in 2014.

About 90% of the wells to be drilled in Canada in 2015 will target oil pools. Now, lower cash flows are cutting into oil-drilling activity. “It’s not just $30 in profit that’s going away, it’s the investment in the next well that is going away,” said Ali Daneshy, principal at Daneshy Consultants International in Houston, which advises on hydraulic fracturing. The Canadian Association of Oilwell Drillers and the Petroleum Services Association of Canada have forecast that the oil price slide means drilling is likely to decline about 10% in 2015.

Raging River Exploration produces all of its 10,000-barrels-per-day of oil in the Viking formation and is among the companies that use Kindersley as a regional operating base. CEO Neil Roszell doesn’t make much of the suggestion the Saudis are focused on far-flung junior producers like Raging River. “I think we’re completely irrelevant,” he said “They really look at the big picture.”

But Mr. Roszell is feeling a definite sense of caution for 2015 in an industry that last dealt with a price shock in 2008 — just as fracking was emerging as a game-changer in the oil patch. He said analysts want producers benchmarking their spending plans at US$75, US$70 and US$65 a barrel. Even with the fall in oil prices, he expects that Canada’s short winter drilling season will ensure activity levels are high through the first quarter. “Guys are looking at it and saying, ‘we’ll adjust budgets and activity in the back half of 2015’ and that’s when the pain of a lower price trickling through to the economy really would get felt,” he said.

Mr. Roszell said companies with strong balance sheets can still grow until oil prices “fix themselves” over the 12 to 18 months. He also understands the “cautious optimism” in Kindersley, where the ups and downs of oil prices are too familiar. “They’ve seen booms come and go,” he said.

Mr. Enns-Wind embraces the town’s revitalization due to fracking, but admits he’d be content with a pace of growth that would ensure against crunches in housing or staffing at the local Tim Hortons and McDonald’s. “It might be nice to take our foot off the gas a little bit and catch up,” he said.