Shell Boss Pumps Up Students
It's not every day that the president and CEO of a major Canadian oil company comes to a university lecture theatre, invites a bunch of undergraduates, brings them lunch and then tells them his company is going to be adding 500 net jobs each year for the foreseeable future.
Clive Mather, the British-born head of Shell Canada Ltd., was a hit with about 200 University of Saskatchewan students Monday for more than the fact he supplied them with pizza and pop.
Students talking to the media after the presentation said they liked the excitement Mather has for current energy developments, as well as seeing the need for new technologies to reduce the environmental impact of hydrocarbon energy in the future.
They especially liked the fact Mather wants good people from engineering, geology, commerce, computer science and human resource management to join his company, now Canada's ninth largest energy producer, and that he's already a fan of the trained professionals the University of Saskatchewan produces.
Mather says he wanted to come to the U of S because so many of the company's top people were trained here. At his lecture, he especially singled out U of S alumnus Margaret Messier, a senior reservoir engineer who was part of Shell's team that used a more advanced seismic computer model to find the company's Tay River gas field in the Alberta foothills. Tay River is considered to be Canada's most prolific natural gas field.
"We're here partly to recruit and partly to establish a better relationship with the University of Saskatchewan," Mather told reporters after his presentation and Q&A session with students. "This is a formidable university and we're interested not just in their talents, but in the formidable R&D that is done here."
While a few students were interested in Mather's views about future careers in alternate energy systems such as hydrogen, Mather told them that people who are hired in the next few years to develop hydrocarbon energy in its various forms won't see petroleum go away in their lifetime.
He says Western Canada probably has 250 to perhaps 350 years of petroleum resources left to exploit.
"We will never run out of oil and gas. That's not the issue," he said. "The issue is not supply, the issue is cost and environmental impact.
"In Western Canada, the resources are so big that I wouldn't even think about how long they could last," he said.
While Mather says the run-up in oil and gas prices helped to push his company's ranking in two years from 23rd-largest producer to ninth and to give it $3 billion in cash profit last year, he says investment analysts aren't viewing Shell Canada's prospects as dependent on $63-a-barrel oil.
He says he expects prices will back off today's peak as they always have in past energy price cycles. He explained to students that high prices invariably result in more spending on exploration, which increases supply. As well, high prices drive down demand.
He said the Athabasca tarsands and their energy potential were legendary but not considered economic to recover 35 years ago. "Technology changes, demand goes up and suddenly the time has come. So I don't think we have hit peak oil."
One alternate energy source that Shell could get involved in that may benefit Saskatchewan is in the field of ethanol production. Shell Canada's parent, Royal Dutch Shell, has a direct investment in Ottawa-based Iogen Corp. which has built a demonstration plant to show that the cellulose in waste crop fibre such as corn shucks or wheat straw can be converted to sugar and then made into ethanol. The area around Birch Hills in Saskatchewan is one possible site for an industrial scale ethanol from cellulose plant.
"If we are considering, as we are, a fullscale manufacturing plant, that investment would be made by Shell Canada," Mather said in a media interview. "Saskatchewan has a lot of advantages in this.
"It is geographically central in terms of the North American and Canadian market. However, there's a lot of issues to address; there are regulatory issues, there are fiscal issues and technical issues."
TheStarPhoenics
Clive Mather, the British-born head of Shell Canada Ltd., was a hit with about 200 University of Saskatchewan students Monday for more than the fact he supplied them with pizza and pop.
Students talking to the media after the presentation said they liked the excitement Mather has for current energy developments, as well as seeing the need for new technologies to reduce the environmental impact of hydrocarbon energy in the future.
They especially liked the fact Mather wants good people from engineering, geology, commerce, computer science and human resource management to join his company, now Canada's ninth largest energy producer, and that he's already a fan of the trained professionals the University of Saskatchewan produces.
Mather says he wanted to come to the U of S because so many of the company's top people were trained here. At his lecture, he especially singled out U of S alumnus Margaret Messier, a senior reservoir engineer who was part of Shell's team that used a more advanced seismic computer model to find the company's Tay River gas field in the Alberta foothills. Tay River is considered to be Canada's most prolific natural gas field.
"We're here partly to recruit and partly to establish a better relationship with the University of Saskatchewan," Mather told reporters after his presentation and Q&A session with students. "This is a formidable university and we're interested not just in their talents, but in the formidable R&D that is done here."
While a few students were interested in Mather's views about future careers in alternate energy systems such as hydrogen, Mather told them that people who are hired in the next few years to develop hydrocarbon energy in its various forms won't see petroleum go away in their lifetime.
He says Western Canada probably has 250 to perhaps 350 years of petroleum resources left to exploit.
"We will never run out of oil and gas. That's not the issue," he said. "The issue is not supply, the issue is cost and environmental impact.
"In Western Canada, the resources are so big that I wouldn't even think about how long they could last," he said.
While Mather says the run-up in oil and gas prices helped to push his company's ranking in two years from 23rd-largest producer to ninth and to give it $3 billion in cash profit last year, he says investment analysts aren't viewing Shell Canada's prospects as dependent on $63-a-barrel oil.
He says he expects prices will back off today's peak as they always have in past energy price cycles. He explained to students that high prices invariably result in more spending on exploration, which increases supply. As well, high prices drive down demand.
He said the Athabasca tarsands and their energy potential were legendary but not considered economic to recover 35 years ago. "Technology changes, demand goes up and suddenly the time has come. So I don't think we have hit peak oil."
One alternate energy source that Shell could get involved in that may benefit Saskatchewan is in the field of ethanol production. Shell Canada's parent, Royal Dutch Shell, has a direct investment in Ottawa-based Iogen Corp. which has built a demonstration plant to show that the cellulose in waste crop fibre such as corn shucks or wheat straw can be converted to sugar and then made into ethanol. The area around Birch Hills in Saskatchewan is one possible site for an industrial scale ethanol from cellulose plant.
"If we are considering, as we are, a fullscale manufacturing plant, that investment would be made by Shell Canada," Mather said in a media interview. "Saskatchewan has a lot of advantages in this.
"It is geographically central in terms of the North American and Canadian market. However, there's a lot of issues to address; there are regulatory issues, there are fiscal issues and technical issues."
TheStarPhoenics
posted by Ottawa Gas Prices | 6:31 PM
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