Photo: Kirk Penton
Darren Gee, left, and Tim McMillan, middle, spoke about the oil and gas industry during a Kelowna Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Friday at the Ramada Hotel.
A pair of oil and natural gas leaders from Alberta painted a bleak picture of Canada’s energy sector during a Kelowna Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Friday.
The recent downturn in the oil and gas business has hammered its economy and caused substantial job losses, including many who live in the Okanagan. Darren Gee, who is the CEO of Peyto Exploration & Development Corp., and Tom McMillan, the CEO of Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, essentially pleaded the industry’s case in front of local business leaders during the luncheon, which was held in conjunction with Energy Week in Canada.
“We have the moral obligation to help the rest of the world, to drag them out of abject poverty, to provide energy to them so that they can have a better quality of life,” Gee said. “We have to stand up for our industry in order to make that happen.”
Both noted how capital spending has decreased in Canada while the rest of the world has been investing. McMillan noted that the capital investment drop of $80 billion to $40 billion in the last four years is the reason why so many oil and natural gas employees are out of work.
“Canadians just need the opportunity to compete, and right now self-inflicted wounds have positioned us in a place that Qatar, Nigeria and Venezuela are out-competing us,” McMillan said.
“It’s not a geology problem or an engineering problem. It’s policy challenges.”
Gee said Canada has some of the best regulation in place when it comes to protecting the environment, but the financial and philosophical backlashes against the industry are causing Canada to fall behind.
“We may care about the environmental impact of energy consumption, but nobody cares what we think,” he said. “There are four and a half billion people in Asia, and they want to get their hands on every last drop of energy they can.
“We can’t influence their consumption.”
What Canada can influence, however, is the kind of energy that is exported to other countries, and he said that would be a much cleaner and environmentally friendly version. The companies just want the government’s co-operation in allowing them to make that happen.
“We can be a leader globally in energy development and delivery,” Gee said, “or we can let someone else do it.”
Gee also warned that if Canada does ramp up its production, it might have to rely on other countries to supply it.
“You think gasoline is expensive at the pump today? Imagine if we had to import oil from the United States to refine it to gasoline,” Gee said.
“We’ve really abandoned the Canadian energy industry, or at least we’ve put up so many roadblocks that the investment community has abandoned the industry.”
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