Editor’s note: The Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Show is coming soon – and each event sees several people honoured for their contributions to the oilpatch. This year three people will be inducted into the Saskatchewan Oil and Gas Hall of Fame. Pipeline Online will be running biographies on each in the coming weeks. Next up is E. Craig Lothian. The oil show takes place June 3-4, with the Hall of Fame inductees being honoured at supper on June 3. You can register for the show and purchase tickets for meals at Oilshow.ca.
E. Craig Lothian was born in 1962 and raised in Carlyle.
He attended the University of Saskatchewan obtained his B.A. in 1986 with a focus on economics and LL.B. in 1988 from the College of Law. He was called to the bar in 1989.
A strong influence on his desire to enter the oil business was his uncle Jack Irwin, who was vice president of land with an American oil company working out of Calgary. Craig was initially going to article in Calgary with a law firm specializing in oil and gas law, but the crash of 1987 meant they couldn’t offer him a job upon completion of his articles, as they had just laid off a significant number of lawyers.
That drove Craig to join a small boutique litigation firm in Regina that was not involved in oil and gas. Despite that, he was successful in building a sizeable oil and gas portfolio for the firm, Gerrand & Co., which made him a partner in 1992.
Craig ended up doing a lot of work for Strike Energy, and its founder, Ed Sampson brought him over for a short term stint that turned into a year and a half. They bought land at Tatagwa from PanCanadian and started drilling. Craig acted as the landman, corporate lawyer and did a bit of business development. When it was bought out, Craig went back to Gerrand.
Don Woolley started a new oil company in 1995 called Flatland Exploration and brought Craig on as an investor and on the board, giving Craig his first inside look at the executive level of the industry.
In 1989 he married Pamela Conklin, a fellow lawyer, who Craig credits with his and his family’s success. “I could never have done what I did in business and in law without Pam,” he said.
The two have two daughters, Kelsey and Jasmine.
And it was in large part because of those daughters the Lothians resisted the temptation, twice, to move to Calgary. After taking her second maternity leave, Pamela chose not to return to the legal profession, but rather raised the children and has subsequently done substantial board work with numerous organizations including SaskTel.
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Hard choices like that made a difference. In 2002, Craig led the acquisition of Keystone Petroleums Inc., a private company that held a significant amount of freehold mineral title in Saskatchewan. To do so, he took out a second mortgage on their personal home. When raising funds for Keystone, he was frequently asked how much skin he had in the game? Craig pointed to that second mortgage, and the fact his wife was a divorce attorney!
Craig often says the most significant member of an executive team is the vice president of serendipity. And that truly was the case when it came to Keystone, which had acquired a significant land position in southeast Saskatchewan, particularly in the area around Stoughton that became the heart of the Bakken boom. It wasn’t prescience, however. “Nobody thought there was a way to get oil out of the Bakken,” he explained.
A few years in, the Bakken boom took hold, and soon he often had four land deals on his desk at the same time. And the offers kept getting better and better, as everyone wanted in on what was then the hottest play on the continent.
This led to a succession of private oil companies founded by Craig. He served as CEO for Flatland Exploration Ltd., Keystone Energy Inc., Keystone Energy Corp., Villanova Energy Corp. and Villanova 4 Oil Corp.
Craig was also a founder and executive chair of Villanova Oil Corp., Villanova Resources Inc. and the current iteration in the Villanova franchise, Villanova Energy Inc.
In April 2022, Topaz Energy Corp. acquired Keystone Royalty Corp., a private land and royalty company that was founded and led by Craig as President/CEO and Chair, for $96 million, equating to a 24.9X Gross Multiple for initial investors.
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Craig is the founder and CEO of Lex Capital Corp., a multi-family office, with a diverse suite of investments ranging from real estate, oil and gas to the tech and renewable resource sectors. In addition to his role at Lex Capital Corp., Craig was one of three founders, the original CEO and now the executive chair of Lex Capital Management Inc., a private equity firm in Regina. Since its inception in 2009, the Lex Funds have raised in excess of $645 million, which was subsequently invested in a series of early-stage oil and gas companies in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
All of this was accomplished from Regina, whereas the conventional wisdom says he should have long moved to Calgary. But as Craig notes, there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people like him seeking to raise investment capital in Calgary, but very few targeting the same market in Regina. He recalled doing 75 presentations in 17 cities across seven states and three provinces. And 80 per cent of the investment dollars he raised came from the U.S., so it really didn’t matter if you were based in Regina or Calgary.
“I think you can build an oil company anywhere,” he said, and it was often seen as an advantage, being closer to the actual drilling in southeast Saskatchewan than Calgary was.
Craig also serves in an advisory role for the Emmertech AgTech Fund and the West Oak Investments Real Estate Fund. On the non-profit side, Craig has served on a number of charitable boards including The Hospitals of Regina Foundation, Enterprise Saskatchewan and the Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital Foundation, where he also served as Finance Chair and Board Chair. Currently, Craig and his wife, Pamela, are co-chairing the Capital Campaign in support of a new Ronald McDonald House in Regina.
Their daughter Kelsey is a dentist in Regina, and other daughter, Jasmine, is a partner with Miller Thomson LLP in Toronto, focusing mergers and acquisitions, and general corporate law including oil and gas.
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