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Next Event | Future Events | Past Events
Next Event March 26 4:00 p.m.
Annual Meetings of
The Petroleum History Society
and
The Turner Valley Oilfield Society
and PHS Awards Presentation
at the Calgary Petroleum Club
Keynote Address: Hack to Flack – Bending the Political Physics of Rhetoric
By: Alan Boras, Industry Analyst and Veteran Commentator
The petroleum industry faces many challenges – one of which is how it is depicted in the media and how it should respond. Our speaker offers an experienced-based perspective on how this situation has unfolded over the years and how it may evolve in the future. Alan asks us to “Recall the day when reports in the daily newspaper were believed by readers and viewers.” They would often say: “I read it in the newspaper. It must be true.” In a historical blink of time, reality and illusion have collided in a chaotic cloud that is hyper-warping the public’s capacity to decipher what is real. First came citizen journalism, a video camera in every pocket, slick documentaries fabricated on laptops, millions of broadcast channels and addicted screenagers with a phone welded to their hand. Next came a multitude of power-hungry serial liars with no conscious and a cult-like tractor beam of behaviour that sucked in followers. Now pour in algorithms that fast track the masses to fortify their natural prejudices through siloed streaming, followed by artificial intelligence that is able to far out compute the minds of readers and viewers. We are left to ask, can we still be smarter than the machine?
Alan Boras was born in Red Deer, started school in Edmonton, raised in Lethbridge and built a 40-year career in Calgary. Following first jobs moving irrigation pipes and swinging drilling rig tongs, Alan worked and studied in a variety of Alberta and Canadian locations. Alan earned bachelor’s degrees in political science and history from St. Francis Xavier University and journalism and communications from the University of Regina. After a decade of reporting at the Calgary Herald, including five years covering Canada’s energy industry, Alan went from hack to flack working in communications, reputation management, stakeholder and media relations at a variety of energy companies – PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd., Alberta Energy Co., Encana Corporation, Seven Generations Energy. Alan provides independent corporate communications and strategic advice to diverse business clients, applying pragmatic and conscientious solutions that foster trust and resolve complex challenges in business, politics and community engagement.
Registration instructions
Please contact Treasurer Ian Kirkland via his e-mail treasurer@petroleumhistory.ca. The deadline for registration is Monday, March 24th at noon.
Payment will be accepted in cash or cheque at the door. Alternatively, payment can be made in advance by Interac or PayPal transfers to treasurer@petroleumhistory.ca, or Ian can send you a PayPal invoice. Please advise how you plan to pay when you contact Ian.
Please be advised that those who register but do not attend or cancel after the deadline will be invoiced. Those who do not register by the deadline may not be accommodated. These restrictions are related to our obligations to the Petroleum Club in terms of catering and seating.
Future Events
Luncheons with a speaker at the Calgary Petroleum Club:
2025 Past Events
February 26. 2025
Petroleum History Venues in the American Oilpatch
by Clint Tippett
During the first few decades of the 20th century, the oilpatch in the United States was buoyed by many important petroleum discoveries that influenced the evolution of the industry and its role in the global economy. Gushers and boomtowns set the stage for intensive developments and instant riches – a flavour that strongly influenced public response to the 1914 and 1924 discoveries at Turner Valley in our country. Today some of the U.S. discoveries are commemorated with museums and outdoor displays. The speaker has been fortunate enough to have visited several of these locales and will share his experiences there with you.
Featured first will be Spindletop on the Gulf Coast in eastern Texas, a 1901 salt dome-related gusher of 100,000 barrels per day that sparked tremendous development and crashed the oil market. This site was visited in 2017 during an American Association of Petroleum Geologists field excursion. The second historic location was not nearly as prolific with only a 600 barrel per day 1908 gusher but featured highly in a political sense – that being the Teapot Dome in Wyoming, visited during a 2016 Petroleum History Institute symposium held in nearby Casper. The 1923 scandal associated with the Teapot Dome reached into the highest levels of the American government.
Clint Tippett was born in Winnipeg and educated as a hard rock geologist at Carleton and Queen’s Universities in Ontario. After seeing the light, he and his family moved to Calgary in 1980 and worked here for 34 years in the employ of Shell Canada. During that time, he had assignments across our nation from the West Coast Offshore, through the Foothills and Plains, to the East Coast Offshore as well as in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and the Yukon. Clint joined the Petroleum History Society in the mid-1990’s, rose through the ranks and is currently its President. He also recently became Chair of the Turner Valley Oilfield Society.
January 29, 2025
Builders from the Oilpatch
by Walt DeBoni, Petroleum Industry Veteran
Abstract
The oil industry has been instrumental in the growth of Alberta and in creation of wealth, both public and private. Our speaker will highlight several individuals who contributed to the growth of our industry, benefitted from its wealth creation, and shared their time, talent, and treasure for the benefit of the community. Walt will highlight mostly the following individuals: Gerry Maier, Dick Haskayne, Charlie Fischer, Doc Seaman, and Ted Rozsa. The talk will focus not only on the contributions that these men and their families made in building our community but also how their business success was at least in part related to their approach to community. All applied similar business principles to their work and to their philanthropy.
Luncheon Speaker Biography
Walt DeBoni worked forty-four years in the petroleum industry with various companies, including Hudson’s Bay Oil and Gas, Dome Petroleum, Bow Valley Energy and Husky Energy with a couple smaller companies sprinkled into the mix. For much of his career he was involved in international exploration and production. While always based in Calgary, he made many business trips to Indonesia, China, United Kingdom, Norway, Iran, Abu Dhabi and Romania. During his final three and a half years while working at Husky, he was in charge of constructing the offshore production facilities for the White Rose Field, offshore Newfoundland, an engineer’s dream job! After retiring, Walt served on several corporate boards. Walt and his wife, Irene, have been involved with Historic Calgary Week for the past twenty years. In retirement, they like to travel and are enjoying and supporting various arts
2024 Past Events
Wednesday, November 27, 2024, noon
luncheon at the Calgary Petroleum Club, 319 - 5 Ave. SW
on The Future History of Petroleum
with speaker Allan Fogwill of the Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada
October 30, 2024, noon
luncheon at the Calgary Petroleum Club
Speaker Dave Marks, member of the leadership team at the Orphan Well Association
on The Orphan Well Association – Past and Present
May 1, 2024
Canada’s East Coast Offshore: 70 Years of Oil & Gas History
by Dr. Brad Hayes, Petrel Robertson Consulting Ltd.
Brad Hayes is President of Petrel Robertson Consulting Ltd., a geoscience and engineering consulting firm advising clients working in oil and gas, helium and lithium exploration, carbon capture and storage, geothermal energy and water resource management.
Brad holds a PhD in geology from the University of Alberta, and has 40 years of diverse experience applying subsurface geoscience in resource industries. He is a Past-President of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists, a member of the Energy Resources Technical Advisory Committee for Geoscience BC, Outreach Director for the Canadian Society for Evolving Energy and an Adjunct Professor in the University of Alberta Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Brad led PRCL in more than 20 years of technical support for East Coast oil and gas exploration and development ventures, including G&G analysis at Hibernia for Canada Hibernia Holding Corporation.
Abstract
Sedimentary basins in Canada’s east coast offshore are rich oil and gas hunting grounds; a long history of exploration and development stretches back to the earliest seismic refraction surveys in the 1950s, and even earlier if one considers early oil wells on the western coast of Newfoundland.
While exploration has been wide-ranging, production today comes only from the oil-prone Jeanne d’Arc Basin on the Grand Banks, more than 300 km east of St. John’s. The Hibernia discovery in 1979 took 18 years to put on stream, and was followed by major developments at White Rose, Terra Nova and Hebron. Oil discoveries a little further offshore in the Flemish Pass Basin await final investment development decisions over the next few years.
Exploration on the Labrador Shelf north of the Grand Banks and the Scotian Shelf to the south proved those areas to be gas-prone. Gas discoveries near Sable Island on the Scotian Shelf were developed in the 1990s, but were depleted by 2018 after more than 2 TCF of gas was delivered. The more remote and physically challenging Labrador Shelf gas discoveries of the 1970s and 80s have not been developed, but tremendous potential remains if a business case can be made for development.
Political and regulatory issues will determine the future of oil and gas in the Eastern Canada offshore. In addition to oil, natural gas potential is enormous and well-positioned for LNG to serve the ravenous European market, but will require federal as well as provincial support to move ahead.
Annual General Meeting at Petroleum Club - 4:oo p.m. March 27, 2024
Guest speaker Dr. Sabrina Peric, Associate
Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archeology at the University of Calgary
Sabrina has been conducting research on Dr. Ted Link, one of the giants of Canadian petroleum
history. Link is credited with the discovery of the Norman Wells Field in the Northwest Territories
in 1920 and was Imperial Oil’s Chief Geologist when Leduc was discovered in 1947. Between
those dates, Link was very active in trying to pull together the geological history of Western
Canada.
February 28, 2024: Jaremko Jottings - by David Finch
Gordon Jaremko changed the way people see the petroleum industry. And he recorded the
story of oil with unique intelligence, insights, passion and clever wit. David Finch, also a
graduate of the University of Calgary history department with an MA in History - Gordon's was
in 1973 - will discuss several aspects of the bibliography of Jaremko. As a journalist, Gordon
was also a philosopher, social historian, political commentator and so much more. While other
newspaper hacks fell into the easy pattern of writing daily articles on deadline based on little
more than a news release from a company flack, Gordon insisted on slogging through the
trenches. He was always downtown in the middle of the action - in Edmonton and Ottawa and
Calgary - notebook in hand, jotting down quotes and facts in his own self-styled shorthand.
His sly, straight thin-lipped smile always kept the person he was interviewing engaged, and
talking, even revealing more than they had intended. Using excerpts from Gordon's writings,
this presentation will cover topics from the five decades of Gordon's writing career.
Past events, including summaries of speakers' presentations, are often recorded
in Archives newsletters.
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