“The oil sands are there,” said Sarnia Mayor Mike Bradley. “They’re producing oil and we have a choice as Canadians to ship it east or ship it south or ship it to China.”
Choosing the eastern option could create an estimated 60,000 new jobs in Canada, Bradley said.
Recently, Sarnia moved from being a lone voice in the eastern wilderness to finding it has allies in the premier’s offices in Quebec and New Brunswick. Both leaders supported the eastern pipeline option during a recent premiers’ gathering in Halifax.
“We’ve made some progress and there’s credibility now,” Bradley said. He credits the efforts of people like Petryschuk and fellow retired oil industry heavyweight Clem Bowman.
Bowman, a pioneer in Canada’s oil sands development who spent part of his long career heading Imperial Oil’s research centre in Sarnia, urged in 2009 to expand refining capacity in Chemical Valley instead of exporting oil sands crude, along with the jobs and investment that flows with it.
Petryschuk joined Bowman and others in creating a recent Canadian Academy of Engineering-based publication Canada: Winning as a Sustainable Energy Superpower.
Petryschuk prepared the economic analysis for its call for more bitumen – oil sands oil with the sands removed – to be refined in Canada, and Sarnia-Lambton in particular, instead of shipping it off to refiners on the U.S. gulf coast.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I don’t expect all of that bitumen to stay in Canada and get processed, but by golly we should be doing a lot more than is planned.”
By the end of the coming decade, the value of converting Canada’s oil sands production to gasoline and other fuels alone will be about $60 billion a year, Petryschuk said.
The impact would grow if additional chemical processing is added in, along with the spinoff created by that much money moving through the Canadian economy.
Petryschuk said he, Bowman and others have been working through the Bowman Centre at the Western Research Park in Sarnia.
They’ve been speaking to politicians, cultivating national journalists and generated an energy supplement published in the Globe and Mail last spring.
“I think we’re actually making some headway,” Petryschuk.
That may be, in part, because plans for both the Keystone pipeline into the U.S. and a new pipeline through British Columbia to the Pacific coast have run into trouble.
But, Petryschuk added he believes the group’s economic message is also starting to take hold in Canada. “We import $30 billion worth of chemicals into Ontario alone a year. What are we doing shipping stuff out and then bringing it back in as finished product?”
In May, the Bowman Centre will team up with the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the Sarnia-Lambton Economic Partnership and Alberta Innovates to host a workshop in Sarnia about processing more bitumen in Canada.
Petryschuk said it was just a few years ago that Shell came close to approving a new refinery for Chemical Valley. “That was economically viable four years ago and the world hasn’t changed at all,” he said.
Bradley said he believes the whole community of Sarnia-Lambton has been ahead of the curve when it comes to seeing the potential benefits of the oil sands. “We understand the industry. We understand we have the pipeline network. We understand the benefits of being closer to markets, than the west.”
At the same time Sarnia-Lambton has been beating the drum, there has been push back from environmental groups warning about potential risks of having more oil sands crude piped east.
“Sometimes you feel that there are people who would rather win the battle than win the war,” Bradley said. “For those of us who recognize the economic benefits, we also understand the environmental side.” Sarnia-Lambton, he said, supports the call for safe pipelines and for building refineries with the highest environmental standards. “It used to be environment versus jobs,” he said. “You can have both.”
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