Estevan – In the sentiment of Twisted Sister’s 1984 song We’re Not Gonna Take It, the oil industry is standing up and demanding respect. In February, the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors launched its Oil Respect campaign.
Since then CAODC president Mark Scholz has travelled the country, speaking to everyone from parliamentarians to chambers of commerce. On April 7, Scholz and CAODC vice-president John Bayko came to Estevan. There they had meetings with local service rig and drilling rig contractors, members of the CAODC.
“It really started from a growing concern from our industry. In a time when we are seeing unbelievable challenges and uncertainty in our industry, a time when over 100,000 people have lost their jobs, that we continue to see our industry painted in a very negative, misguided and untruthful manner.” Scholz said.
“We started thinking about this in late 2015 about what we could do to better promote this industry. One of the areas that we have always seen as a gap is that industry does a particularly good job highlighting innovation, highlighting technology, our equipment, our robust regulatory systems, and the energy industry as a whole. But up until now, we have not really tried to humanize this business and this industry.
“When you look at the standards our industry has to live up to, who is ultimately accountable to do that? It’s the men and women who work, in the field, day in and day out, in minus 40-degree and plus 30-degree temperatures. (They) ultimately work very hard and give our industry the international reputation it has today – the most environmentally responsible, sustainably developed oil and gas development in the world,” he said.
“We have to start really educating people in a way that says, ‘Look, these are just regular, hard-working Canadians who are losing their jobs in an industry that all Canadians benefit from. Yet, we still get the rhetoric from radical environmentalists, grandstanding politicians and foreign celebrities who come out here and present untruthful, misguided information about the industry.’”
Scholz said the campaign has three objectives and they unapologetically support the oil and gas industry.
The first is addressing misinformation spread about the industry by those who oppose oil and gas development and its consumption. Second, they want to give regular, hard-working Canadians who are employed in the business, unemployed, or have family in the business a voice.
Thirdly, they want to remind the media, the public and the government that the reason Canada has one of the highest standards of living in the world is from affordable oil and gas that is developed responsibly in Western Canada.
Scholz pointed out there are systemic issues, too. “Our products do not command world prices.”
“We don’t even get WTI, let alone international pricing.”
Our product goes to one market, America, and that market has also become our biggest competitor.
Quebec also imports 90 per cent of their oil, and 37 per cent comes from countries with much lower environmental, labour and human rights standards than Canada’s. “That’s why Energy East is so important,” he said, referring to TransCanada’s proposed pipeline that would supply most of Central and Eastern Canada with Western Canadian oil.
The campaign can be found online at oilrespect.ca.
