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LLOYDMINSTER, Canada — Amid the corn and canola fields of eastern Saskatchewan, oil foreman Dwayne Roy is doing what Saudi Arabia and fellow OPEC producers are loath to do: shutting the taps on active wells.

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The last place oil producers want to be when prices plummet to profit-demolishing lows is midstream on a billion-dollar project in one of the costliest parts of the planet to extract crude.

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Inside a six-foot-square wooden shed that houses a basic hydraulic pump, the Gear Energy Ltd employee demonstrates how shutting down a conventional heavy oil well in this lesser-known Canadian oilpatch is as simple as flipping a switch. His company has already done so hundreds of times this year, making the Lloydminster industry among the first in the world to yield in a global battle for oil market share that has sent crude prices tumbling to six-year lows.

Gear Energy Ltd, has idled up to 500 of its least efficient wells this year, many of them in the past weeks. Some cost of up to $28 a barrel to operate. It costs another $7 in royalty and transportation fees to get the crude, among the densest in the world, to regional rail hubs – where it was fetching barely US$20 a barrel during last month’s lows.