Natural Resources Magazine / Vol. 18 No. 1 2016NR10

Every industry wants to achieve excellence. But it’s never easy getting

there. It requires extraordinary effort, focus, determination and

skill. However, companies across Atlantic Canada engaged in the

oil and gas, mining and renewable energy sectors frequently achieve it. Our inaugural Industry Excellence

Awards program recognizes some of the companies, and individuals – like Emera Inc.’s president and CEO Chris Huskilson – who have stood out among their peers in the realms of resource development, health and safety, innovation and championing communities. Inside, you’ll read about their pursuit of excellence in industries where maintaining the status quo is not an option.

INDUSTRY EXCELLENCE AWARDS

N AT UR A L RE SOURCE S M AG A Z INE ’S

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Emera Inc. president and CEO Chris Huskilson referred to the

September 4, 2015 deal where the firm bought Tampa Bay-based utility TECO Energy for US$10.4 billion as a “bullseye.”

Bullseye indeed. In one trans-action, the Halifax-based energy company doubled the size of its employees (from 3,700 to 7,400), it now has US$20 billion in assets and 2.5 million customers and has moved into two new geographical areas – New Mexico and Florida. For his role in pulling off the deal of 2015 in Atlantic Canada energy circles, Hus-kilson is Natural Resources Magazine’s first Industry Person of the Year.

Since Huskilson was named Emera’s top executive in 2004, the company has steadily grown under his leadership. Its out-of-country affiliates include Emera Maine (although that acquisition occurred before Huskilson became CEO) and Emera Caribbean, which serves 179,000 customers in Grand Bahama, Barbados, St. Lucia and Dominica. It also owns power plants in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

But the TECO deal is Emera’s, and Huskilson’s, boldest move yet. TECO comprises three utilities with over 1.5 million customers, and the Tampa and New Mexico areas are experiencing job growth and a strong housing market, meaning TECO’s customer base is fairly affluent and demand for electricity is likely to grow. “We are building a North American energy leader,” Huskilson said during a conference call with analysts on the day the deal was announced.

We couldn’t arrange an interview with Huskilson for this story. We were told his schedule was too full with travelling and other commitments. One of those commitments is likely ensuring that bringing TECO into the Emera family goes smoothly. The deal is expected to close in mid-2016.

But once the deal is completed, Huskilson made it clear Emera would look for more growth opportunities, something this deal will help with because it can access the skills of the 3,700 employees it has inherited from TECO, “to do the larger things we are hoping to do.”

So what are those things? Huskilson wasn’t saying back in September. For now he noted Emera was focused on closing the TECO deal, finishing the Maritime Link project and continuing to supply the New England power market. “And then we’ll go from there,” Huskilson said.

INDUS T R Y PE R SON OF T HE Y E A R

Chris Huskilson

US$10.4 BILLIONWHAT EMERA PAID TO ACQUIRE TECO ENERGY

“ We are building a North American energy leader.” Chris Huskilson, president and CEO, Emera Inc.

Natural Resources Magazine / Vol. 18 No. 1 2016NR12

Darren Zwicker, Terrapure Environmental’s vice-president of environmental solutions,

says the company has one goal when it comes to health and safety. “We want to make sure our employees go home safe every day.”

It’s that laser focus that has earned it a 2016 Industry Excellence Award in the health and safety category.

Its health and safety record is particularly impressive at its five branches in Atlantic Canada. For the past 24 months, Terrapure’s facilities there have had no injuries requiring employees to miss work. Zwicker says a key reason why the injury statistics are so low is the company’s robust health and safety culture. At its Sussex, New Brunswick branch, for example, all employees had to come up with a personal safety slogan and the slogans were put on a collage at the branch.

It might seem like a minor gesture, but Zwicker says it’s all about driving home the message that health and safety is everyone’s job. “We really try and focus our efforts on what we would call safety impressions – how many times can we touch an employee with something safety-related,” Zwicker says. “Safety is not something that can be prescribed from the top down. It’s something that has to come from the bottom up.”

“ Safety is not something that can be prescribed from the top down. It’s something that has to come from the bottom up.”

Darren Zwicker, VP Environmental Solutions

HE A LT H A ND S A F E T Y RE SOURCE DE V E LOP ME N T

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TERRAPURE ENVIRONMENTAL

St. John’s-based Talon Energy Services gets an honourable mention thanks to a long list of initiatives, including its “Making Safety Personal” campaign and the Talon “Stop and Think” program. “Health and safety ranks as high or higher than making profits,” says Jamie Engram, Talon’s health and safety manager.

Mount Pearl’s K&D Pratt earns plaudits for tracking safety performance monthly and having numerous safe work procedures in place. In March of 2015, the company achieved 2,000 days with no lost time due to workplace injuries.

Nalcor Energy’s oil and gas division is attempting to prove that Newfoundland and Labrador’s offshore

territory holds substantial reserves and is largely unexplored.

Its efforts appear to be paying off based on the results of the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board’s latest call for bids that resulted in $1.2 billion in work commitments from industry. Nalcor’s work in promoting the jurisdiction makes it our Industry Excellence Awards winner in the resource development category.

Since 2010, the province’s energy company has invested $43.6 million in offshore exploration programs, including the acquisition of 100,000 kilometres of 2D seismic data. That work has helped identify three new deep-water basins off Labrador, as well as the expansion of the previously discovered Hawke Basin. Nalcor is also evaluating offshore sedimentary basins for new oil and gas potential.

The end game is to entice oil and gas companies to invest in the province. “Nalcor’s ultimate goal is to attract new exploration and development interests, which will create thousands of high-paying jobs, enormous supply opportunities for local businesses, a tremendous jump in government royalty and tax revenues, and a level of prosperity never before seen in Newfoundland and Labrador,” the company wrote in a recent summary of its offshore work.

NALCOR ENERGY

Statoil Canada is more than halfway through an 18-month exploration drilling program in the Flemish Pass Basin despite stalled negotiations with the government on a development agreement for its Bay du Nord discovery. “Statoil believes there is potential in the Flemish Pass,” spokesperson Alex Collins says. “However, we need innovative, smart solutions and a collaborative spirit.”

Meanwhile, Trevali Mining Corporation continues to ramp up production at its Caribou lead-zinc-copper mine near Bathurst, New Brunswick. As of November, 2015, the company said it was on track to meet its production goal of 2,500 tonnes per day.

“ Nalcor’s ultimate goal is to attract new exploration and development interests, which will create ... a level of prosperity never before seen in Newfoundland and Labrador.”

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Natural Resources Magazine / Vol. 18 No. 1 2016NR14

C OMMUNI T Y CH A MP IONS

CANADA FITTINGS & FLANGES INC.

A. Harvey & Company Ltd. deserves kudos for its 150 Acts of Kindness charitable initiative, which was conceived to mark the St. John’s-based company’s 150th anniversary.

Employees were asked to come up with ideas for it, and they came back with sugges-tions ranging from putting on a Christmas dinner in Septem-ber to organizing tea parties at senior’s homes. “It’s been very eye-opening and rewarding,” says A. Harvey’s Stephanie Pat-ten-Kibyuk. “It reminds you of how great it is to give back.”

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It was a client who gave the idea to Justin Adams.The idea was for his employer, Paradise-based Canada Fittings &

Flanges Inc., to put on a charity ball hockey tournament to raise money for good causes. After talking to company management about it, Adams decided to give it a whirl. “We weren’t sure how it was going to go over,” Adams says.

Adams need not have worried. The tournament has been a huge success. Since starting it in 2012, it’s grown from attracting seven teams to a high of 14 in 2014. And despite having just seven employees in the company, this full-day June event has raised $33,000 with all the proceeds donated to the fi rst and second-place teams’ charities of choice.

Because this small company has made such a big impact with the event it created, Canada Fittings & Flanges is our Industry Excellence Awards winner in the community champions category.

Adams says the tournament is a team eff ort. The company’s employees, friends, family, even clients, pitch in to help pull it off . He says it’s gratifying to see how appreciative the recipients of the funds raised are each year. “They are so excited,” Adams says. “They don’t expect this.”

“ We weren’t sure how it was going

to go over.” Justin Adams Canada Fittings & Flanges Inc.

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VALE

Being innovative requires patience.Vale knows this to be true.

In 1999 it developed the patent for a novel metal processing technology called hydromet. But it wasn’t until 2009 that it was confident enough the technology could work at an indus-trial scale that it started building its Long Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador processing plant. “If the technology was already on the shelf, it would have been a much quicker process,” says Stuart Macnaughton, vice-president of Vale Newfoundland and Labrador.

Of course, it wasn’t. Vale invested $200 million in research and develop-ment of this processing technology that does not emit toxic sulphur diox-ide while processing nickel concen-trate from its Voisey’s Bay mine. The technology is now being used in the US$4.25 billion plant that will employ 450 people, which is why Vale was selected as the winner in the innova-tion category for our inaugural Indus-try Excellence Awards.

While the plant isn’t producing at full capacity yet, Macnaughton says the hydromet technology is working well and there have been few tech-nical issues with the plant. “We are happy with our progress to date,” Macnaughton says. “The only thing we’re unhappy with is the nickel price. But there isn’t much we can do about that.”

Dr. David Risk of St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia receives an honourable mention for developing a mobile system called EXACT that can detect gas leaks. Risk’s system is now a hot commodity in Western Canada’s oil patch, where it’s used by Calgary-based Cenovus Energy and other players looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

“Techniques like ours that can quickly find leak vectors are going to be very central to figuring out what’s the low-hanging fruit for improvement,” Risk says.

INNOVAT ION

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FEEDBACK* dcampbell@naturalresourcesmagazine.com a @NRM_Editor; #IndustryExcellenceAwards

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