Don Wood turned to a sailing analogy to describe the current state of efforts to attract a new oil refinery to Sarnia-Lambton.
Wood, an associate of the Sarnia-based Bowman Centre, was speaking Friday at the Western Research Park as the centre was presented with a Resource Champion Award by the Sarnia Lambton Chamber of Commerce.
“When you have headwinds, and we have headwinds right now on our project, you can’t sail a boat straight into the wind,” Wood said.
“You have to tack and adapt.”
Wood is part of a team at the centre that has been working on what’s known as the Sarnia-Lambton Advanced Bitumen Energy Refinery, or SABER, project.
It’s building a business case for a new refinery in Sarnia-Lambton that would upgrade oil sands bitumen already available from existing pipelines connecting the community to Western Canada’s oil fields.
The Bowman Centre and SABER project team argue another refinery in Sarnia would capture jobs and wealth lost when oil is exported to refineries in the U.S. or overseas.
The SABER project came out of a national bitumen conference the Bowman Centre organized in Sarnia-Lambton in 2013.
Wood said headwinds the effort faces included oil prices sitting 40 per cent below where they were a few years ago.
“So, people in the industry don’t have as much cash to spend,” he said.
It has been estimated a new oil refinery would cost $10 billion to build in Sarnia-Lambton.
“We have headwinds coming from climate change,” Wood added.
That’s leading the SABER project to adapt its business case.
“We’re trying to move forward with some flexibility,” he said.
“We don’t have specifics to talk about yet, but what we’re thinking about is some reduction in scale, some inclusion of bio-feedstocks, and some change in the product mix.”
But, Wood added, “At the end of the day, anything of the kind of scale we’ve been talking about is good for the community.”
The award the Bowman Centre received Friday comes from a Canadian Chamber of Commerce initiative to boost awareness of how important nature resources are to cities.
Rob Taylor, chairperson of the Sarnia Lambton Chamber of Commerce, said the award honoured the hard work being done by the Bowman Centre and volunteers working on the SABER project.
“This group has dedicated an enormous amount of time and considerable expertise to create prosperity in Sarnia-Lambton,” he said.
“As a region with such rich history of resource development, we know what it would mean to our community and Canada” if the bid to attract a new refinery were successful, Taylor said.
Walter Petryschuk, a Bowman Centre associate, said its mission is to “catalyze big energy projects across this nation” and generate “sustainable, well-paying jobs.”
Canada loses billions of dollars in potential added value “because we’re not refining the bitumen in this country,” Petryschuk said.
“That, to me, is almost criminal.”
The recent decision by the U.S. to not approve the Keystone oil pipeline from Western Canada to the U.S. won’t alter the Bowman’s centre’s approach, Petryschuk said.
Attention is expected to move to other pipeline proposals in Canada, he said, adding the Bowman Centre supports all efforts to refine more oil at home.
But, he added, “We are ready in Sarnia-Lambton now” because of pipelines and infrastructure already in place in Chemical Valley.
Earlier this year, the centre announced it’s using approximately $100,000 pledged by area companies to advance the work of the SABER project, and its efforts to secure a commercial partner.
“I can’t over-emphasis the amount of support we’ve gotten from this county and this city,” Petryschuk said.
“On the street, people will actually talk to me about this project.”
Petryschuk thanked the Chamber for the award, and gave credit to the volunteers working on the centre’s projects.
“Without them, we just wouldn’t get this job done,” he said.
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