Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Can oil deal prompt return to The Rock?

Can oil deal prompt return to The Rock?
Nathan VanderKlippe and Shawn McCarthy
Calgary, Ottawa — Globe and Mail
Tuesday, Jun. 16, 2009

Is the smell of the sea sweeter than the scent of Alberta crude?

Danny Williams thinks so. The Newfoundland and Labrador Premier trumpeted a major deal yesterday to expand the Hibernia offshore oil platform as another leap forward by a province that has already lured home thousands of workers.

“We're seeing a steady stream” of Newfoundlanders returning from the West, he said. “It's happening now. Our numbers have turned from out-migration to in-migration, so we're seeing that now.”

But in Alberta, where many Newfoundlanders came to find lucrative oil patch jobs, the Hibernia expansion provides only a fleeting opportunity for work – not nearly enough to persuade the island's diaspora to sell homes, uproot families and return home. Contrast that with Alberta, which yesterday saw the first flash of an expected reawakening of the oil sands – which could provide tens of thousands of jobs for a decade – as Connacher Oil and Gas Ltd. reinvigorated a small, stalled oil sands project.

That certainty is what's keeping Sean Wyatt in Alberta. Experience has taught him that the promise of returning home for a single project can easily be distorted into disappointment. Originally from St. John's, he left in 2001 to find work in Texas. Two years later, he returned to Newfoundland for a design job with Husky Energy's White Rose offshore field.

It was nice to be home, but that job lasted less than two years. Soon, he found himself chasing mainland work again. He moved to Calgary in 2005. He misses Newfoundland, and wishes he could be near his parents, who are in their 70s. But Hibernia South, which is promising few new jobs, isn't enough to pull him back.

“We all went home to White Rose and they were saying [the Exxon-led] Hebron was going to kick in right away. And here it is 41/2 years later, and it hasn't started up yet. So the work wasn't consistent,” Mr. Wyatt said.

Other possible future projects in Newfoundland – including the Lower Churchill hydro development, Vale Inco's $2-billion nickel smelter and oil production from the Fleming Pass and Orphan Basin areas – have stoked hope among some that the province truly is rising. The lure of work has been potent enough that in late 2007, Newfoundland stemmed a tide of human exports that had been leaving its shores every single quarter since 1991.

Robert Kavcic, an economist with BMO Nesbitt Burns, expects that trend to expire the moment Alberta's economy sparks back to life, once again drawing people westward. But Nalcor Energy, the government of Newfoundland's oil and gas company, has begun aggressively recruiting Alberta's crop of Newfoundlanders, many of whom live in a place they jokingly call “Newfoundland's third-largest city” – Fort McMurray.

“We're seeing people return and we're heavily recruiting ourselves,” said Nalcor chief executive officer Ed Martin, a Grand Falls native who moved to Calgary as a young man to work for Mobil Oil. “We're a growing company – we're not sitting still and we need highly skilled workers. So we're going out to try to find them and bring them home.”

Mr. Wyatt isn't convinced.

“We always knew the potential [for Newfoundland] was there, it just was a matter of when it was going to happen. It seems like now it's starting to change. And a lot of guys who go home think there could be work there for 10 years because of all these things possibly happening,” he said. “But it's not guaranteed.”

He won't return unless he knows he will find long-term work. His brother Ray, also a structural designer in Calgary, isn't interested, either.

“I'm not looking to go back myself,” he says. “I've been here four years now and my wife and I kind of like it. So we're thinking we'll stay.”

Mike O'Keefe, another Newfoundlander in Calgary, admits to being under the “Newfoundland Curse” – the powerful pull home.

“I'll always have an interest to go back,” he said. “You can't help it.”

But Hibernia South is too small, Mr. O'Keefe said. “Husky did a recent expansion, and it did create some local employment. But there was no big amount of man-hours that would warrant a big migration back to Newfoundland. And I don't except Hibernia is going to be all that different.”

Besides, Mr. O'Keefe said, the upheaval that has rocked the Alberta oil patch since last fall has already sent enough Newfoundlanders home. “There's enough people home right now that are not working,” he said.“They can fill up a lot of holes before they would come take me.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/can-oil-deal-prompt-return...

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