NOVA SCOTIA CANADA: THE NEXT PLAY

Nova Scotia training the offshore industry

Universities and college work with ExxonMobil

Geoscientists, engineers and welders of tomorrow are being educated and trained in Nova Scotia’s education system. In fact, the province’s 11 universities and 13 community college campuses have been turning out graduates prepared to work in petroleum exploration and production for decades.

Nova Scotia boasts more post-secondary institutions per capita than any other region in North America, resulting in one of the most highly educated workforces in Canada.

The capital city of Halifax has five universities and three community college campuses. Dalhousie University, through its “Energy at Dalhousie Program,” works in collaboration with industry and government partners and other institutions within Nova Scotia, the Atlantic region and beyond. The university is a leading academic institution for energy sector research and education in the province. Their web address is www.energy.dal.ca.

Dr. Grant Wach has been Professor of Petroleum Geoscience at Dalhousie since 2002. He was asked to come to the university from industry to develop and oversee a new program focusing on petroleum research and education. Wach and his colleagues formed Energy at Dalhousie to conduct inter-disciplinary research into conventional and renewable energy sources and their impact on the environment, economy, and society. Energy at Dalhousie provides a means of collaboration through multi-disciplinary “Research and Resource Networks” between members of various faculties and deans.

Wach has been directly involved with exploration and commercialization of oil and gas projects in numerous basins around the globe. He describes his research as the basis for exploring in any basin.

“The sedimentation history and stratigraphy are fundamental to basin analysis,” he says. “We study everything from the basin to the grain. We need to understand the stratigraphy of a basin and the depositional environment before exploration begins.”

Wach continues, “It is imperative that we work closely with engineering. The geology studies, now in the initial phases of field development, set the scene for the work of petroleum and reservoir engineers. If the geologists and engineers do not get it right, we are going to leave oil and gas in the ground.”

In offshore Nova Scotia, Wach and his graduate students are working in close collaboration with Dr. David Mosher of the Geological Survey of Canada (Atlantic) investigating the distribution and characterization of reservoirs. Wach stresses the concept of linked depositional systems, understanding the connection between the rivers and deltas that distribute the sediment that can form oil and gas reservoirs on the shelf, slope and basin floor.

Saint Mary’s University also has a strong petroleum geoscience program and includes researchers such as Dr. Geogia Pe-Piper. In addition, Saint Mary’s University and its Sobey’s Business School are tackling the energy sector using a financial lens. Beginning in 2007, the provincial government and Pengrowth are funding a professorship in Petroleum Financial Management to foster leading edge research in this sector.

Pengrowth Energy Trust, a partner in the Sable Offshore Energy Project, is also heavily involved in funding student scholarships. Along with the Nova Scotia provincial government, Pengrowth supports a $3 million trust which funds undergraduate and graduate scholarships for the oil and gas leaders of tomorrow.

At Nova Scotia Community College, (NSCC) a network of 13 campuses throughout the province, business development manager Sterling Feener says the college’s oil and gas reputation has been built by providing training to industry clients such as ExxonMobil. Recently, the College, along with Cape Breton University, provided ExxonMobil with a training program for the new compression platform for the Sable project.

“We do a tremendous amount of work with ExxonMobil and we have proven that we are capable of providing world class top quality training,’’ said Feener.

He says the opportunities are growing as well. Oil and gas workers from Angola, Russia and Italy have been trained under a unique program that provides English-language training as well as specialized oil and gas instruction.

More training is also planned as the College expands into LNG.

At NSCC campuses throughout Nova Scotia, more than 1,200 students are being trained each year with skills suited for the oil and gas industry. Electrical, mechanical, operations and instrumentation education are offered by the college.

The post-secondary education community in the province continues to rapidly develop a worldwide reputation for quality programs and facilities. The community of institutions is ideally located to play key roles in education, research and development for the offshore.

University professors, researchers and students at Dalhousie, Saint Mary’s, in Halifax, Acadia in Wolfville, Saint Francis Xavier in Antigonish, and Cape Breton in Sydney are involved in advanced energy research and education.