Whether interested in practicing energy law or just curious about the industry, all UAlberta Law students were invited to attend alumnus Bruce Lawrence's presentation "Exploration, Drilling and Production of Oil & Gas - A Practical Primer" at the Law Centre on February 9.
Considered one of Canada's foremost experts on oil and gas, Lawrence (LLB '82) is a Partner at Borden Ladner Gervais in Calgary in their Securities and Capital Markets Group, and is the Regional Chair of the firm's Oil and Gas Focus Group.
Dean Paul Paton provided welcoming remarks during the noon hour session.
"The oil and gas industry in Alberta is vital to our province, and I'm pleased that we have a capacity crowd here today wanting to know more. With experts like BLG Chair David Percy and BLG Fellow Cam Jefferies as professors here, we are fortunate to be able to lead the way in teaching and research on these important issues. UAlberta Law is extremely pleased to have BLG as a partner in this, and we welcome Bruce back to the Faculty for a 'nuts and bolts' introduction to the industry and the issues."
During the presentation, Lawrence gave attendees a high-level introduction to the exploration, production, transportation, and refining of petroleum substances.
"We're all in the oil and gas business if we practice in Alberta," he said. "If you don't know the basics of what it [oil and gas] is, you can't do the job."
Lawrence began his presentation by talking about oil reserves in Alberta, and provided several statistics:
· Alberta has drilled more than 450,000 wells since the early 1900s
· Alberta has the third highest petroleum reserves in the world, behind Venezuela at number one and Saudi Arabia at number two
Lawrence also came prepared with several hands-on items, including drill bits, petroleum substances (crude and refined), as well as oil sands, and core samples.
Attendees learned industry terms such as diluent, farmout, and fracking, many of which were explained by diagrams Lawrence drew.
Lawrence also touched upon the geology and chemistry of crude oil and natural gas, explaining that each is made up of thousands of different compounds, and differentiated between oil, natural gas, and oil sands, as well as explained pooling, unitization, and spacing units.
In addition, he distinguished between "sweet" and "sour" petroleum products, explaining that each label is given based on the amount of sulphur it contains.
In the final part of his presentation, Lawrence went over exploration and drilling methods, and the legal and practical requirements of drilling.
During the question-and-answer portion of the presentation, Lawrence was asked about the criteria used to classify the quality of oil, as well as how he came to have so much knowledge of the industry.
In response to the last question, Lawrence encouraged students to be proactive and hands-on to increase their knowledge of the industry, and suggested visiting clients at their place of business to become as knowledgeable as possible.
UAlberta Law would like to thank Mr. Lawrence for sharing his time and expertise with our students.