By Paul Morden, from www.theobserver.ca The Observer
A member of Sarnia-Lambton’s A-Team of retired petrochemical executives travelled to Alberta’s oil patch Wednesday to make a pitch for building a $10-billion oil sands bitumen upgrader and refinery in Chemical Valley.
Don Wood, an associate of the Sarnia-based Bowman Centre and a former Polysar vice-president, was in Calgary to speak on a panel at an Oil Sands Symposium about opportunities that exist for a major new refinery project in Sarnia-Lambton.
“I think I’m going to get a fairly sympathetic answer because people out here have a supply overhang, competing with the shale oil from the Bakken and other places, and need new markets,” Wood said.
The conference attendees his presentation is targeted at include CEOs, directors and vice-presidents of oil industry companies.
As well as providing an outlet for western oil, a new 150,000 barrel-a-day upgrader and refinery in Sarnia would allow Canada to capture $2.5-billion annually in added value that will be created elsewhere if the bitumen is processed overseas, Wood said.
“That’s $62 billion over 25 years,” he said. “We believe that a sufficiently interesting number.”
Wood spoke at a bitumen conference organized in Sarnia in May about how an upgrader and refinery in Sarnia would be profitable. He went on to lead a project team of retired petrochemical executives, formed by the Bowman Centre following the conference, who volunteered their time to develop the case.
“As it turns out, Sarnia is a great retirement spot,” Wood said.
They were able to draw in retired senior executives from Suncor, Shell, Imperial Oil, Nova Chemical and Bayer.
At this point, Wood said, an industry sponsor is needed to get behind the project.
“And, we think we need involvement of governments to pull some levers,” he added.
One of Sarnia-Lambton’s advantages in the search for new outlets for the bitumen being produced from the oil sands is the existing petrochemical infrastructure in Chemical Valley.
“There may be some minor expansion needed, but there’s pipelines coming into Sarnia from Western Canada that could carry the diluted bitumen,” Wood said.
Wood said he is feeling optimistic the work being done by the Sarnia-Lambton group can pay off.
“We do have interest from major players in Alberta that I’m going to be meeting with on Friday,” he said.