A LIttLE bIt AbOut
John Pearce
Education: Mechanical engineering, 1984 University of Alberta
co-op stream.
Professional memberships: Association of Professional
Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA)
Hobbies: With wife Lynn, a professional engineer who also
began her career in thermal heavy oil with Imperial Oil and
keeps their busy lives on track, Pearce has a son, turning 13, and
twin daughters, 11. They’re into tennis, soccer, golf, skiing, and
waterskiing, music lessons, camping and boating, and more. “We
generally lead a pretty full life; we love to travel,” Pearce says before
he admits with a laugh they have a digital schedule for the family.
“I got fantastic training at Esso,” Pearce says. “They are a very prin- cipled and highly successful company—principled in business and en- vironmental practices, in contracting practices. Safety is huge.” After he flung up his hand to request a transfer to the company’s oon-to-be major thermal installation at Cold Lake, he got involved
in technology development during three years as field engineer for a
series of pilot projects, getting in on the ground floor.
“We were managing technology development for the purpose of
transfer to the commercial project, leading to the [cyclic steam] tech-
nology they use today to make 150,000 barrels a day,” Pearce says.
“That was the foundation for thermal heavy oil.”
When he came in from the field, environmental responsibility was
becoming a major focus for Esso (Imperial Oil), so he headed for that
department.
“I brought a field-engineer focus into the environmental group,
auditing a very large percentage of the Imperial Oil operations along
with more specialized environmental people,” Pearce says. “We cre-
ated solutions for some of the problems that had been identified. I
found it very engaging.”
So much so that when a voluntary severance was offered across
the company in the early 1990s, Pearce took the opportunity to set up
as a consultant, selling engineering services to the oil and gas indus-
try and to small businesses, which were also coming under increased
environmental scrutiny.
Contracts took him to Trinidad and Tobago, where he got an introduction to oil refining, and to South America, where he taught produced water-treatment technologies. He wrote the environmental
terms of reference in Peru for its Camisea gas field development.
In 1996, Pearce, now married, opted for a full-time job and moved
to Morrison Petroleums, where he had done contract work. He an-
nounced that his aim was to set up a thermal heavy oil division
and double the size of the company. When Morrison merged into
Northstar Energy in 1997, Pearce says, “I got sprung to explore
Pelican Lake–style production from heavy oil that was defined while
they were drilling for shallow gas.”
A major milestone came when the province announced it wanted
to sell its shares in the Underground Test facility (UTf) where SAGD
was first proven, so Pearce put together a complicated deal to
Words to live by: “Make sure you’re doing the right thing before
you worry about doing it right,” and, “Where’s there’s confusion
there’s opportunity.”
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