acquire the shares, which were owned by the government-owned
Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority.
In January 1998, Northstar became the UTf operator, “[which]
gave me my understanding of SAGD as opposed to cyclic steam,”
Pearce says.
Late that year, Oklahoma-based Devon Energy bought Northstar
to become its Canadian operating entity, Devon Canada.
“There I was with a thermal heavy oil project,” Pearce says.
“Operating as a pilot project it was not making a lot of money, but
from very early in the game Devon understood all the rewards and
heartaches of thermal heavy oil.”
Pearce spent much of the next year at the province’s gas-over-
bitumen hearings, which were to determine the fate of resources
where both bitumen and gas are present. He was the lone SAGD
technical expert who argued on behalf of natural gas producers that
the Grizzly Oil Sands team
brian Harrison, vice-president of operations
“Brian Harrison [was] right-hand man at Devon and now at
Grizzly, a second-generation thermal heavy oil fellow because
his dad was in the business as well,” says Pearce. “He has a vast
amount of experience in plant, field, and well operations, applying
engineering principles and discipline to the operation of thermal
heavy oil facilities. He has a much greater penchant for detail
than I do. I’m more on the ideas side. We’ve had great chemistry
over the years. If you recall, Oilsands Review wrote a very good
profile on Brian in the January 2007 edition. It seems like a long
time ago.”
Derek Lee, vice-president of exploration
“Derek Lee has a high level of intelligence, a deep understanding
of how the geology of the Athabasca Basin was laid down. He has
found a lot of oil in his 28-year career with Petro-Canada,” Pearce
says. “He was drawn to the size and quality of the Grizzly land
base, and is excited about the vision of developing multiple small
projects and eventually pushing technology from a resource-recovery perspective, making many improvements to SAGD as
time goes on. As we get the cash flow, he will start implementing
some technologies that will improve our environmental
performance and in lockstep, our economics.”
Grizzly Oil Sands president and CEO
John Pearce believes that a small, agile
company can slip in between the big
boys’ shoulders and produce relatively
smaller oilsands resource pools with
numerous SAGD installations of 5,000
to 10,000 barrels per day.
the gas should be produced and the reservoir repressurized with an
inert gas or air, then turned over to the bitumen producers.
“The hearing was instrumental in my understanding that the province valued oil over gas—far more,” he says.
Around the time of the next round of gas-over-bitumen hearings,
in 2001, Devon managed to initiate repressurizing technology above
the Christine Lake pilot. “It worked,” Pearce says with satisfaction.
That was the year Devon became a major presence on the
Canadian scene by buying Anderson Exploration, which held the
Jackfish lease that Devon has since built into a highly successful 35,000-barrel-per-day SAGD project with expansions underway. Jackfish, which started construction in 2005, is recognized
for its environmental standards, capital efficiency, and production
performance.
Again, being in on the ground floor, Pearce was deeply involved.
“Development of all the initial design of Jackfish got me to understand the large-plant process,” Pearce says.
During the early years of this decade, Pearce, as Devon’s thermal
heavy oil manager, also launched a solvent vapour extraction pilot at
the UTf, injecting propane into two well pairs and pumping out bitumen diluted with propane.
“Unfortunately we didn’t get to a combination of steam and pro-
pane, which is where I wanted to go, because Devon sold the UTf to
PetroCanada [in 2005].”
Pearce was also Devon’s management-committee representative
on the Surmont joint venture until Devon sold its 13 per cent share of
the lease to Total E&P Canada and ConocoPhillips in 2005.
After all this large-organization experience, Pearce says leading smaller Grizzly offers the ability to be a corporate leader in a
small way.
“I felt there was opportunity to apply my talents to the thermal
heavy oil business in a different way,” he says. “I really enjoy pushing
the front end of projects and didn’t perceive myself as being a large-
organization manager. I like to be close to the project and have my
hand on it a lot.”
Pearce is confident that Grizzly’s vision can succeed.
“What’s necessary is that we really understand how it all
works, that we really understand how the piece of central plant
equipment connects to the reservoir, understand how fluids
move through the well and are delivered to the plant, and how the
plant produces the fluids.”
The goal is to get all the reservoir-and-production numbers to
match the plant-design numbers.
“It’s easier with a smaller operation,” Pearce says. “We’re characterizing a smaller reservoir and a smaller plant.” SR
