20 Years: From Humble Beginnings to Happy Endings

Life wasn’t so easy in Newfoundland and Labrador 20 years ago as it was a magestic Canadian island in the Atlantic Ocean, with harsh weather conditions, and very little infrastructure to sustain itself.

Twenty years ago, off the shores of the island of Newfoundland, was the greatest Cod fishery breeding ground that the world had ever seen. Newfoundland’s industry mainstay was fishing and that was headed for a moratorium due to global overfishing. The only glimmer of hope we had, ironically enough, were more riches from the sea – the offshore oil and gas industry. Life’s irony is like that, challenges turn into opportunities and the world relentlessly seems to provide, even when all seems lost.

A testament to their hearty characters, Newfoundlanders moved from fish to oil. They started from scratch with entrepreneurial spirits, and from nothing they created everything.

It was humble beginnings for the oil and gas industry in eastern Canada, 20 years ago. The very first project touted to be the “savior” of our economy was Hibernia. With negotiations closing and global partners coming together to make it happen, Exxon, Chevron, Petro Canada and Gulf signed the first deal to make Hibernia happen. Then without warning, on February 4, 1992, Gulf Canada pulled out of the Hibernia oil project. At the time Gulf’s 25 percent stake was considered a monumental share of the Hibernia project.

With Gulf pulling out, Newfoundland was again left breathless. Yet like all powerful entrepreneurs, after the shock of the partnership pull-out was over, Newfoundlanders brushed themselves off, stood up and said, “we won’t accept this as our destiny.”

Proudly the business community gathered together to make Hibernia happen, no matter what. It was people like John Crosbie, Miller Ayre and Cabot Martin who lobbied Canada’s federal government to ensure this project had enough participation and investor appeal, that it would fly.

Our magazine had just started. We were barely one year old, and we were creating a magazine that was writing about the POTENTIAL of oil, not yet to be seen on our shores for another six years. We too had everything riding on the success of the Hibernia project. Hundreds of local oil and gas suppliers were also banking on Hibernia as their future success. It was a very volatile time, and yet somehow that volatility made it exciting and interesting.

I remember Cabot Martin coming to our back- room office of my little home on Signal Hill, saying to myself and Kim Todd, our editor at the time, “Ladies, you got to help me do something about this.” And so we did – a full scale marketing campaign that ran in the Globe and Mail, educating people on the true possibilities of Hibernia. The full page ad headlined, “The Big Picture On the Big Project.”

A testament to partnership and unstoppable character, once the business community, the oil companies and the provincial and federal governments all came together to make Hibernia happen – thankfully it did! With a new partnership strategy in place, we were off to the races once again. It would be 6 years before we had any oil come to shore, and yet the industry was born with no prior oil and gas experience, and quite miraculously, an oil industry was born.

In 1991, the building of the very first oil platform, a gravity-based concrete island, was built as the solution for Hibernia at the Bull Arm Construction site. An engineering feat, it was designed to withstand the harshest environments on earth – the mighty Atlantic Ocean, 200 miles from shore known as iceberg alley.

Pioneering people, Newfoundlanders and other great talent from around the world, came together to build a $5.2 billion dollar platform that would literally be the foundation for Hibernia.

The Making of an Industry

Hibernia was a great success, which provided the transfer of competence, talents and technology to move into new fields offshore Newfoundland. With staggering development, we advanced into additional fields such as Terra Nova, White Rose and now Hebron. These projects have turned Newfoundland into what it is today, an energy warehouse of innovation, creativity, competence and profitability. Newfoundland and Labrador produces more than 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day (b/d), representing about 12 percent of Canada’s total crude oil production.

The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board estimates oil reserves for each of the major producing discoveries as the following:
• Hibernia: 1.24 billion barrels discovered
• Terra Nova: 419 million barrels discovered
• White Rose: 283 million barrels discovered; North Amethyst, a White Rose satellite expansion project which began producing in 2010, contains an additional 68 million barrels of oil. About 1.14 billion barrels of this oil has already been produced.

The Hebron project, estimated to contain 400-700 million barrels of recoverable oil, will be Newfoundland and Labrador’s fourth major development, with oil production expected to begin before the end of 2017.

Building a Magazine

People often ask me, “Why did you choose an oil and gas magazine as your business idea?” I say, “When inspiration comes and you feel the momentum of possibility pulling you into the future, you have to go with it. I didn’t choose it – it chose me.”

What I’ve come to realize is that building a business is a self-expression. Each day we get to create it, paint it, design it and develop it as we choose, and intrinsically that process has allowed me to self- actualize as we brought the vision to reality. This was no different for the thousands of companies and people who built their own business dreams, partaking in the opportunities provided by Hibernia, Terra Nova, Whiterose and Hebron.

Humble Beginnings

Starting the Oil and Gas Magazine was no small feat, and yet somehow, I knew that it was the right thing to do. At the time, I was a single mother of a two-year-old girl, and my incoming bills outweighed my income overall. Although I had no prior oil and gas experience, what I did have was a lot of guts, ferocious creativity, and a passion to start my own magazine – the important elements that sustain us! I and many other Newfoundland companies had that same spirit, and this year many of us are celebrating 20 years of business success in the energy industry together.

Without funding for a business, or investors or partners, I had to come up with creative ways to make it happen. I started to research and network, and I went out to the oil industry in Newfoundland and asked them what they thought about an oil and gas magazine coming to the market – one that could educate us, facilitate the process of business and support our people and province.

About 20 of the 40 companies I talked to thought it was a good idea. Others said it couldn’t be done because people had tried it before, and since there was no current industry, and oil was not to come to shore for another six years, it was a long shot. I focused only on the positive “yes’s,” and I kept my eye on where I could go, and what could be created.

I love long shots, I love risk and I love creating something from nothing. So I designed a concept for the magazine, whereby I would exchange the most fundamental equipment needed to produce the first magazine – a computer and a photocopier.

A very positive guy who I shared my vision with was Dave Rodofsky! In 1991, Dave owned a technical services company, and we exchanged advertising for equipment. With those two pieces of equipment along with editor and friend Kim Todd, somehow, we wrote and produced the first magazine – even though we had no clue what we were doing!

My next step was to find people interested and marketing to the oil and gas industry. Companies who would like to profile their companies, supplies and services in what would be the greatest project in Newfoundland history, to date. Remember those 40 companies I went to talk to – well the 20 that said, “Yeah I think it’s a good idea and here’s why” – they became our first clients, many of whom we still have today.

My very first client was advertiser Dave Keating from Transocean. I remember going into his office which looked out over St. John’s majestic harbor, and I was thinking, “Thank God, He’s a nice guy.”

Transocean was a global, very successful, well- established company, and there was a little part of me that said, “What’s a little girl like you doing in a place like this?” Thankfully, Dave was generous with his time, his listening, and his attention to my vision, and how we could support them and market them as a leading drilling contractor in Eastern Canada. Convinced and happy to be supportive, Dave Keating signed my first contract in The Oil and Gas Magazine.

It was that contract that gave me the confidence to go for the next one, and the next one and the next one. Back then $1000 was a lot of money! I was over the moon with my sale. I went on to sell $23,000 in advertising in my very first, “not yet published” oil-and- gas magazine! From there, I negotiated the printing based on my signed contracts, and the rest is history.

I remember designing the pages of the magazine on Ventura Desk Top Publisher – the desktop publishing software of the time. We’ve come a long way from Ventura Desk Top Publishing, and have moved into sophisticated publishing programs like InDesign and Illustrator. We’ve revolutionized the communications industry with digital media and social media. Times have certainly changed. There was a time when there were few publishers and the written word was a hard thing to publish, but that is now a thing of the past. Publishing is so affordable and efficient these days that it has now become available to every company. That’s amazing when you think about it.

Creating a magazine taught me a lot. Most importantly a business doesn’t always require money to succeed. Money is important to the process, but it’s simply the currency of the transaction. It takes creativity, insight, determination, and unstoppability to make things happen. If I had any advice to those considering starting their own business, I would say, “Find the people who believe in you and support your vision and go for it. Take only the “yes’s,” forget the “no’s” real fast and focus, focus, and focus some more on what’s possible.”

Happy Endings

Newfoundland prospered as our oil projects grew in numbers. Thousands of successful companies emerged to supply and service these mega oil projects. Major contractors, sub-contractors, suppliers and retailers all benefitted from the oil industries lucrative opportunities.
For the province, there has been $1.8 billion oil royalties paid to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for oil in the 2009-10 fiscal year. $5.5 billion oil royalties have been paid to the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to date. Thirty-one percent of provincial government revenues came from the oil and gas industry in 2009-2010. Over 3,000 people currently work in the oil and gas industry in Newfoundland. There has been $17 billion in capital spending, by the industry in Newfoundland and Labrador since 1995.

People have prospered, companies have grown, the province has blossomed, and most importantly, expertise has been transferred and gained. We now have a highly competent oil-and-gas work force for projects to come as well as project opportunities in Greenland and other parts of the world.

Newfoundlanders are “in the know” when it comes to oil and gas. That’s the true power of determination and vision in just 20 short years!

Happy 20 Year Anniversary!

We celebrate your successes and our own, and THANK YOU so much, to all the people who contributed to The Oil and Gas Magazine to bring it from a little 20 pager in Newfoundland, and grew it to the booming global magazine that it is today. We now enjoy being headquartered in Newfoundland, with additional locations in Calgary, Houston and Abu Dhabi! Very exciting! Special thanks to the extraordinary team of The Oil and Gas Magazine, and to those who have moved on to new destinies!