Fort McMurray’s devastating wildfire is no longer the Canadian oil enterprise’s largest problem

Harbir Chhina helped expand the game-converting steam era that allowed companies to faucet the arena’s 1/3-largest reserves in Canada’s oilsands. It was a moonshot that paid off.

Canada as soon as fancied itself an emerging electricity superpower. as an alternative, it's been outmanoeuvred by means of its personal largest client — which has raced beforehand to become its pinnacle oil and fuel rival.

Now the oil-sands enterprise, nonetheless recuperating from closing month’s wildfires, needs every other one. with out a technological step forward like steam injection three decades ago, the flows that have transformed the u . s .’s economy may want to slow to a trickle. In a world that has lots of reasonably-priced crude, and increasingly demands cleanser power, the oilsands look dirty, as well as luxurious.

“We didn’t use that phrase moonshot,” but that’s what it become, says Chhina, now a pinnacle exec at Cenovus energy Inc.

The look for cleanser and less expensive strategies may be less pressing than combating the blaze, which knocked out extra than 1 million barrels of each day output and pressured the evacuation of an entire city. but ultimately it’s a bigger danger.