I’ve periodically commented in this column that the oil industry’s new normal is one in which oil prices – having briefly cratered at below US$27 in February 2016 – have been drifting in the US$50 range since last October. The tough part of that story is that it’s unlikely to change. World-wide, for every barrel of oil we consume, we discover two.

The chart above shows the commodity’s inconclusive movements over the last year. This is a difficult market to trade, and it’s one in which you have to be flexible.

In the petroleum-related sector, this column has covered Yangarra Energy YNG.TO, which has more than doubled. I have also analysed Calfrac (CFW.TO), Halliburton (HAL), Nabors (NBR), and Precision Drilling (PDS). In those cases, I bought the stock, took a profit, moved on, but kept them on my watch list. And that brings me to my latest purchase, which is partly motivated by political behavior south of Canada’s border.

The chart above shows Badger Daylighting, a Canadian company which provides industrial cleanup services for the resource and other sectors in the economy. As the chart illustrates, it took a deep plunge in response to worries about the Trump administration rejection of climate change at the G7 meeting, and in subsequent commentaries. In the PPO panel, you can see that the stock is oversold. The arrow in the top panel shows that the stock is still oversold.

Mr. Trump has eased up on regulations covered by federal jurisdiction, and this may have spooked the market a bit. However, industry, states and many others have made it clear that they reject his failure of leadership on this file. In my view, they are buying Badger as an antidote to his ill-considered proposition that the environment doesn’t require protection. Nothing BAD about that!

The company is North America’s leading provider of non-destructive hydrovac excavation services. Badger traditionally works for contractors, engineers, and facility owners in the oil and gas, power, municipal, transportation, industrial, and commercial construction industries, according to the company’s website. “Our key technology is the Badger Hydrovac System,” they continue. Hydrovacs are truck-mounted excavation units “used primarily for digging safely in areas with buried pipes and cables. Unlike traditional mechanical excavation, the Badger Hydrovac uses a pressurized water stream to liquefy the soil cover, which is then removed with a powerful vacuum system and deposited into a storage tank housed on the truck.”

Badger has been designing and manufacturing the hydrovac for more than two decades, the company continues, “continually improving the safety, efficiency, and productivity of the system. Equipped with the most advanced vacuum excavation equipment, Badger then provides hydrovac services to thousands of customers across North America. Badger crews, customers, and employees provide invaluable feedback on ways to improve the technology. Those ideas are evaluated by an in-house engineering team and the best ideas are incorporated into the design of the next generation of Badger hydrovac system, making it safer, more reliable, easier to use, and more productive.”

Today, according to the company’s website, its fleet of more than 1,000 hydrovac vacuum trucks provides excavation services in more than 100 US and Canadian locations and their surrounding areas. Its primary customers are contractors and facility owners in the utility and petroleum sectors; they account for 55% of its revenue. The other 45% is split among the power generation, transportation, industrial and engineering sectors.

It’s worth noting that much of the demand for Badger’s services to the oil refinery and other sectors are highly inelastic to oil prices. The work has to be done regardless of the price of oil.