The propulsive industry; oil and gas breed a community of builders

The role that government-industry cooperation has played in the development of the Canadian petroleum industry is recounted by way of providing background to delegates to the World Petroleum Congress taking place in June 2000 in Calgary, Alberta. Among individuals whose contributions have been vital to the development of the industry are the late Premier Manning of Alberta, and J. Howard Pew, President of Sun Corporation, Todd Montgomery, Michael Supple, Chris Hopkins, the triumvirate leaders of the privately owned SynEnCo Inc., the latest entry into the oilsands lineup, Dave Beckwerment and Jeff Arsenych, the visionaries behind Ravenwood Resources Inc., Robert McLeay, founder of Mera Petroleum Inc., and Robert Mansell, the economist who keeps tab on the industry from his home base at the University of Calgary. According to Mansell, four-fifths of Canadian oil and gas production is located in Alberta, which constitutes some 45 per cent of the country's economy. From manufacturing to communications and information technology, other sectors draw heavily on the oil and gas community for customers and talent. Despite occasional disparaging remarks applied to the industry as being 'a mature and sunset industry' it survives through its visionaries and adventurers who flourish in a cross-section of the community built by earlier pioneers, in various niches ranging from economical drilling for modest conventional reserves to international hunts for proverbial elephant-sized discoveries in world trouble spots. The staying power of the industry through upheavals of global proportions underlines the talent and policies that manage the Canadian petroleum industry, and provide an indication of the scale of the country's natural resources