Obituary: Rick George

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James R Hagerty, Obituary: Rick George 1950-2017; Suncor CEO Saved Firm by Giving Employees Hope.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ric ... ing-hope-1502460001

Quote:

(a) "When Rick George arrived in 1991 at the Canadian oil company now known as Suncor Energy Inc, he found a morose workforce wondering when, not if, the firm would collapse. Many regarded its core mission, extracting oil profitably from the gooey oil sands of the Athabasca River basin in Alberta, as impossible.

"Production costs were far above the price fetched by the oil, and Mr George was told only modest reductions in those costs were possible. With his fresh eyes, he spotted the problem: The machinery used to gouge into the oil sands, a contraption consisting of scoops and conveyor belts, was prone to frequent breakdowns. He called it 'an arthritic dinosaur.' "

"Mr George's low-tech solution was to replace the dinosaur with more agile power shoels and dump trucks. Soon Suncor began making money. The company's value soared to around $50 billion when he retired in 2012 from less than $1 billion two decades before.

" ' The company needed hope as much as anything,' he wrote in a memoir.

"Under the Colorado-born Mr George, Suncor also became Canada's largest oil producer, partly by taking over Petro-Canada [at the time, a 'crown corporation of Canada' -- ie, state-owned enterprise] in 2009.

(b) "He died in Calgary, Alberta, Aug 1 od leukemia at age 67.

(c) "Richard Lee George * * * grew up in Brush, Colorado, a small agricultural town noted for cattle auction.  His father repaired television sets * * * He got a summer job maintaining oil equipment. The oil industry struck him as a good career option. 'Every man in the industry appeared to be driving a shiny new car or [new] pickup truck,' he wrote in his memoir.

(d) "After earning an engineer degree at Colorado State University [based in Fort Collins: 65 miles north of Denver], he accepted a job at Texaco Inc [which had been based in Beaumont, 90 miles east of Houston; Chevron acquired Texaco in 2002 and moved its headquarters to California] in Houston. * * * Soon he decided that he didn't want to be a petroleum engineer for his entire career. While keeping his Texaco job he attended [public] University of Houston's law school.  Studying law, he found, taught him to deal with gray areas rarely encountered in the precise world of engineering, giving him 'a whole different approach to solving problems.'

"Once he obtained his law degree, Texaco moved him to White Plains, NY, and sent him on trips around the world to draft or modify contracts.  He jumped to Sun Co in 1980

(e) "His ability to connect with other people helped him form better ties with indigenous communities and to deal with criticism from environmentalists. He credited the influence of his father, a repairman who 'knew almost everyman in town and could always find something to discuss with them  [people].

Note:
(a) Suncor Energy (based in Calgary, Alberta; specializes in production of synthetic crude from oil sands; Suncor was founded in 1919 in Montreal as Sun Company of Canada, a subsidiary of Sun Oil (now Sunoco) [founded 1886] ) en.wikipedia.org
(b) morose (adj): "having a sullen and gloomy disposition"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/morose

(c)
(i) Oil Sands. Suncor, undated
www.suncor.com/about-us/oil-sands
("We were the first company to develop the oil sands, creating an industry that is now a key contributor to Canada's prosperity. Suncor holds one of the largest positions in the oil sands. * * * Oil sands is a mixture of bitumen, sand, fine clays, silts and water. Because it does not flow like conventional crude oil, it must be mined or heated underground before it can be processed. Suncor produces bitumen in two ways, mining and in situ. [Click 'Explore the oil sands' in the left lower quadrant of the web page. In the new page, 'In Situ. Using techniques that are similar to conventional oil production, we inject steam into the reservoir to heat the bitumen so it can be pumped to the surface.']  Mining[:] About 20% of Canada's oil sands is close enough to the surface to be mined. Suncor uses large trucks and shovels to extract the oil sands that are near the surface (approx. 130-200 ft deep)" )
(ii) In Situ Oil Sands Production 101. YouTune.com, published by "Student Energy" on Mar 26, 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLKAPVSS3Xg

(d)
(i) oil sands
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands
(lso known as tar sands)
(ii) asphalt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphalt
("Note: The terms bitumen and asphalt are mostly interchangeable, except where asphalt is used as a shorthand for asphalt concrete")