Gordon Kelly thinks the oil sands could be Canada’s ticket to a clean energy future
Author champions oil patch in new book
Gordon Kelly has been in training for all 75 years of his life for the advocacy role he takes on as author of The Oil Sands: Canada’s Path to Clean Energy? He was born into the officer class of the global energy industry
An international oil company built Kelly’s birthplace – Talara, on the Pacific coast of northern Peru – as a refining and shipping port for wells dating back to 1850. Use of surface seeps that attracted the industry has an even older pedigree. Early Spanish seafarers caulked wooden sailing ship hulls with boiled tar skimmed from pits dug into foothills of the nearby La Brea Mountains.
His father, T.D. Kelly, worked in the Peruvian seaport for Imperial Oil before the Second World War. At the time, the Canadian firm doubled as a foreign expansion arm of its majority shareholder, the ancestor of ExxonMobil Corp.
After wartime service as a naval captain, the elder Kelly moved the family to Canada and helped launch the modern Alberta industry as manager of Imperial’s transportation department. The son joined Imperial after earning an engineering degree in Toronto. Kelly also obtained an MBA from Harvard University, but not before he got his hands dirty learning industry ways.
Until the mid-1970s, Imperial owned drilling rigs and put freshly hired engineers and earth scientists through rugged basic training on them. Kelly’s 1956 rig classmates included the late Bill Hopper, going through his industry baptism by labor with Imperial two decades before he rose to national fame as chief executive officer of Petro-Canada.
Kelly attained prominence as planning manager of Dome Petroleum, a 1970s household name that rivaled Hopper’s federal government-owned national oil company as a driving force of Canadian corporate takeovers and frontier drilling. Kelly unsuccessfully opposed the final takeover that eventually bankrupted Dome, and then switched into international consulting. He has worked in 24 nations for private and state clients including the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
Kelly poured about three years of work into his 324-page book, hiring Calgary contractor Kingsley Publishing for editorial, printing and marketing services. He rapidly attracted an industry following, selling about 1,000 copies or one-fourth of the initial press run before its official launch in Calgary last November.
Kelly voices the often espoused philosophy of Alberta engineers and managers that knowledge is power and accurate information changes minds. Facts can effectively counter emotionally tinged enviro-political campaigns pressing for a halt to oil sands development, Kelly insists.
“The strength of this is it doesn’t take sides,” he says, holding up a copy of his book. The author says he worked overtime on purging his text of personal feelings. The tone is cool. The oilman-author does not rant. He does not hesitate to discuss industry flaws.
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