High Arctic Continues Outstanding Safety Performance and Updates Cost Initiatives

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CALGARY, Alberta, April 30, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- High Arctic Energy Services Inc. (TSX: HWO) (“High Arctic”, the “Corporation” or “We”) is pleased to report on outstanding operational safety performance and progress made on previously announced cost reduction measures. 

On April 16, 2020 the Corporation's Production Services operation with our major customer at Cold Lake, Alberta reached the world-class milestone of seven (7) years Total Recordable Incident Free.  It is our largest single operation with many of the Corporation’s well servicing rigs on contract with a top-tier major customer.  Over the seven years, the team amassed 1.64 million safe workhours where not one person needed medical treatment or missed any work time because of a workplace incident. This latest milestone in Canada aligns with continued outstanding safety performance by High Arctic’s operations in Papua New Guinea which currently sits at over 2.3 million safe workhours.

Don Pack; Executive Vice President of the Company reflected on these achievements: “These successes continue to prove that our focus on quality, throughout world-wide operations and at every level in our business, is building a safe work culture at High Arctic that gets challenging work done right the first time and without injury".

High Arctic has been quick to move in reducing costs in an attempt to preserve cash resources in the current challenging market conditions.  In the past month, decisive action has been taken to address overhead costs.  We combined North American and International business unit management and eliminated approximately half the cost of executive and senior management.  This action was followed quickly by a reduction of one-third (1/3) of indirect support and G&A head count across Canada, the USA, Papua New Guinea and Australia.  These measures followed the previous announcement suspending High Arctic’s dividend to shareholders and reducing Board of Director fee remuneration by 20%.

Mike Maguire, Chief Executive Officer of High Arctic commented: “Our sights remain firmly set on the health and well-being of employees, the communities in which we operate, suppliers and customers during the evolving global pandemic. The business realities associated with suddenly lower oil prices and customer demand gave us cause to identify that we must cut significant indirect costs out of our business. I am pleased that we have been able to do so while not impacting our front-line workers and their families.  Reduced activity levels have already impacted too many of Alberta’s best, and we have focused on streamlining management and support to improve efficiency and eliminate waste.  It gives all of the High Arctic family reason to be proud when we can reduce costs and heighten efficiency all the while preserving our world-class safety culture”.

About High Arctic

High Arctic is a publicly traded company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “HWO”. The Corporation’s principal focus is to provide drilling and specialized well completion services, equipment rentals and other services to the oil and gas industry.

High Arctic is a market leader providing drilling and specialized well completion services and supplies rig matting, camps and drilling support equipment on a rental basis in Papua New Guinea. The North American operations provides well servicing, well abandonment, snubbing and nitrogen services and equipment on a rental basis to a large number of oil and natural gas exploration and production companies operating in Western Canada and the United States.