He once had company ice hockey sweaters that carried the message: “Kickin’ ass in oil and gas.”
Years ago he told an industry conference that he preferred to fly solo because “working with a partner is nothing but a pain in the ass and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”
He once broke that golden rule and offered the chairmanship of the company he founded to equally outspoken Texan J.P. Bryan — a marriage some likened to the brief wedding of basketball star Dennis Rodman and former Baywatch star Carmen Electra.
That was a bit unfair. The Rodman union lasted only nine days. Bryan survived 10 weeks, before heading for the hills without explaining the break up.
“The boys were not compatible,” said one of Bryan’s friends.
But it’s events such as these that have given Greg Noval his label as an industry maverick.
From the time he launched Canadian 88 Energy in 1988 and built it into a C$600 million company, Noval has delighted in ruffling feathers, tangling with regulators, launching bold but futile takeover bids and getting embroiled in various legal battles.
The latest legal brouhaha involves lawsuits against Canadian Superior Energy over allegations that the company issued misleading claims about the success of an exploration well offshore Nova Scotia — a well that has since been abandoned.
Now Noval, himself a lawyer, is taking issue with plans by Calgary-based Esprit Exploration (the successor of Canadian 88) to convert to a royalty trust.
In a letter distributed to selected recipients, he said the Esprit move, under the leadership of Steve Savidant, was proof that a highly-touted management team “knows their game is up.”
Noval said the Esprit executives have “shown the market they couldn’t find oil and gas if it hit them in the face.”
He promised shareholders an alternative plan if they rejected the trust option.
But apparently Noval, who made an unsuccessful bid for Esprit in 2001, does not see Canadian Superior as part of that proposal.
Shell to expand exploration position in Alaska
“Shell wants to develop a bigger exploration position in Alaska, which it sees — alongside North Africa, the Russian Arctic and the global deepwater — as one of the key areas of upstream potential for the international oil and gas industry.”
That was the lead in a Sept. 23 article in Oil Daily by Jim Washer. The enterprising Mr. Washer said he interviewed a top Shell executive on the “sidelines” of a Royal Dutch Shell company strategy presentation in London on Sept. 22.
Petroleum News confirmed the information — provided by Shell’s global exploration director Matthias Bichsel — a bit closer to home with Shell spokesman for EP Americas, Kelly op de Weegh.
Op de Weegh said everything reported in the Oil Daily story was accurate.
Shell has spent the last 18 months, she said, reviewing Alaska’s potential.
“Shell has a global commitment to grow through exploration, and a huge part of that will be in North America. As part of viewing and ranking those opportunities we looked at Alaska because of its large reservoir potential. It is one of the key areas that we are investigating,” op de Weegh said.
“We’re clearly interested in trying to get a foothold there,” Bichsel told Oil Daily, acknowledging that Shell currently has a minor acreage position in the state, referring to the company’s re-entry into Alaska in 2002 with the $2.4 million acquisition of 56,000 acres south of the North Slope’s Kuparuk River unit.
Bichsel said those leases were picked up by the local operating unit “on a purely opportunistic basis.”
He said Shell has enough information in place after the “thorough evaluation” of the last 18 months to “go after a focused and targeted approach in the future.”
Oil Daily said Bichsel indicated Shell could achieve its goals in Alaska through lease sales, without the need to do deals or make acquisitions. (Does this mean there is no pending deal with BP to trade for North Slope assets?)
“There has been a lease sale earlier this year. We didn’t participate — we were still effectively doing our homework,” Bichsel told Oil Daily.
Bichsel said Shell’s plans for Alaska were not dependent on the government opening the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling. (BP and ChevronTexaco hold leases in the coastal plain.) He said Shell’s interest in Alaska was the “western part, onshore and offshore.”
Op de Weegh would not elaborate on “western part,” which could include the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, west of existing North Slope producing fields.
It could also include the Chukchi Sea, which Shell officials talked about with MMS officials this year and where Shell has explored in the past. Shell officials have said the company would return to the Chukchi if they could be assured of consistently high oil prices, in the $30 range, and a reasonable tariff for oil pumped down the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.
The “western part” could also mean the Bristol Bay basin in southwestern Alaska. Shell officials visited several state and federal offices this year, gathering information on the Bristol Bay basin. Their interest, according to one Petroleum News source, included the possibility of exporting liquefied natural gas from the region.
In mentioning Shell’s continued interest in Sakhalin and West Siberia, Bichsel told Oil Daily, “You have a bit of a theme there — Sakhalin, West Siberia and Alaska — which is the Arctic, which requires big funds, which requires technology, tenacity, staying power, which I think companies like ours are very well suited to.”
Yabba dabba do time in British Columbia
It’s a footprint that goes back millions of years and it’s got the British Columbia resource sector in a tizzy.
“I was in utter disbelief,” admitted geologist Mike Boddy, of the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines. “I was in chock for a couple of days.”
“This is an exciting find for all Canadians,” declared David Anderson, a federal government Member of Parliament and former cabinet minister.
“Who knows what else is out there waiting to be discovered?” mused B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Richard Neufeld.
The object of their excitement?
Dinosaur tracks in the Bowser basin, north of the City of Terrace in northwestern B.C. The foot imprints and a fossilized turtle shell were unveiled Sept. 21. The fossils were from the early Cretaceous period, dating back 65 million to 144 million years.
Peter Mustard, an earth sciences professor from Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, said the fossil evidence shows that “there were dinosaurs this far west in B.C. ... which is something we’ve never known before.”
Neufeld was delighted that the initial turtle skeleton find was made during a routine day of geological mapping: “Resource development is not only a key to B.C.’s economic future, it’s also helping unlock our past. Careful, scientifically based research is allowing us to develop our natural resource potential and, at the same time, get a first hand look at remote areas of the province.”
The Bowser and adjoining Sustut basins contain Jurassic and Cretaceous sedimentary rocks more than 16,000 feet thick and covering 17,000 square miles. Since 2002, the Geological Survey of Canada and the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines have been working on a C$4 million geoscience program to collect baseline data to help the oil and gas industry better focus its exploration efforts. In 1995, the GSC estimated the undiscovered potential of the Bowser basin at 2.5 billion barrels of oil, 13.7 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 16 trillion cubic feet of coalbed methane.
Dome Petroleum drilled two wells in the area about 30 years ago, but abandoned its effort because of its gas-prone nature of the geology. Now that gas is in such hot demand, the industry’s view of the region has changed dramatically.
