Legendary oilman says it's time to go green

David Finch, Calgary Herald

Published: Sunday, May 18, 2008

"Three hundred dollar a barrel oil is where I think we are going," Thomas Homer-Dixon said Thursday night in Petrolia, Ont. -- the birthplace of the North American oil industry 150 years ago, in 1858.

That's right, Canadians found oil the year before Edwin Drake discovered it in Titusville, Penn., in 1859.

In Petrolia's Victoria Hall, a grand old building that oil built in 1889, and rebuilt after it was gutted by fire in 1989, Homer-Dixon was introduced by the great-grandson of John Henry Fairbank, the man who started Fairbank Oil in 1861.

Since 1880 Fairbank Oil has been supplying oil to Imperial Oil and in the 1890s Fairbank was the largest oil producer in Canada. And it was on property now owned by the Charles Fairbank Oil Properties Ltd. that Hugh Nixon Shaw had his oil well blow wild in 1862. It gushed crude all over the trees and then slithered down Black Creek and into the Great Lakes to foul rich people's yachts as far away as Kingston, Ont.

Oilmen from Ontario's oilfields came west to Alberta and made the first big discovery at Turner Valley, southwest of Calgary, in 1914.

But Homer-Dixon, the University of Toronto professor, was talking about the future, not the past.

In his presentation, The Great Transition: Coping with the end of the Oil Age, he says we are faced with an unprecedented challenge.

The energy industry and climate change are "intimately entangled" in a vicious circle. Our energy consumption makes climate change worse and the way we are reacting to climate change makes our consumption of energy worse.

Homer-Dixon also says that oil prices today are rising at the same time that the American economy is experiencing a recession -- an unprecedented event.

"It may turn out that the best thing that ever happened to the human race is global warming."

If it prompts us to change our ways.

We need to adopt conservation measures, invest in renewable sources of energy, expand our use of nuclear power and coal-fired power plants that mitigate their pollution with carbon capture and storage, utilize ground source heat pumps, create a global carbon trading regime, and find alternatives to conventionally defined growth.

When Homer-Dixon asked if anyone in the crowd of 70 people knew anything about ground source heat pumps, only two hands went up.

One belonged to Charlie Fairbank, arguably the owner of Canada's oldest oil company. Though only 66 years old, he is every bit as innovative as his bearded great-grandfather, whom he resembles more than a little.

This oilman produces 24,000 barrels of oil a year from shallow oil wells -- about 121 metres deep.

Oil was discovered in this part of Ontario when it soaked up to the surface as bitumen and gave rise to the community called Oil Springs. Others followed, including Petrolia and Wyoming.

Charlie's grandfather arrived in 1861 and ever since, Fairbank men have been coaxing oil out of the ground.

And what happened to the land where the oil spilled in 1862?

The field that was once covered in oil is green today, and sheep graze on the grass. In fact, their dung and naturally occurring bacteria have reclaimed the oil spill area.

Nature eventually reclaims the land -- but it takes time. And we may not have all that much time.

Charlie is an oilman, so he drives a pickup truck. But his other vehicle is a Prius. And he and his wife, Pat McGee, heat their home with ground source heat pumps.

In the hall that oil built in Petrolia, Thomas Homer-Dixon encouraged residents of North America's oldest oilfield to look to the future.

"Every time you put your foot down on your accelerator you are exacting a cost on your children and your grandchildren," he said. "I am too . . ."

And Charlie Fairbank and his wife have certainly been listening to people like Homer-Dixon and using their innovative heritage to become part of the solution to the

energy and climate change challenge that faces us all.

David Finch is a Calgary historian and the author of PUMPED: Everyone's Guide to the Oil Patch published by Fifth House Publishers of Calgary.

© The Calgary Herald 2008