Though he’s fit and trim, Neil McCrank smilingly claims it’s a struggle keeping up with the “bunch of old guys” he chases in the Hamburger Hockey League at a Calgary rink on Tuesday nights. That’s McCrank in a nutshell: Affable, unpretentious, approachable. He cycles to work each morning and builds dollhouses for the grandkids in his home workshop.

So why do so many Alberta landowners and environmentalists regard the chair of the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB) as the second coming of Dr. Evil? “No question, at times we do (encounter hostility),” nods McCrank, who tries to attend an EUB open house a few times each year. Generally, he gives a short speech, then takes heat from community activists and other citizens who feel threatened by oil and gas development.

“There are occasions where it seems the foundation of a meeting is to challenge what we’re doing,” understates McCrank, who’s frequently in the eye of the hurricane.

Since joining the EUB six years ago, McCrank has attempted to demystify the board’s inner workings, to reassure the public the board isn’t merely a rubber stamp for almighty oil and gas interests.

Photo courtesy Alberta Energy and Utilities Board
Neil McCrank

“We’ve tried to open the doors and let the sunshine in,” nods McCrank, whose compensation includes a $218,000 salary, plus $73,000 in annual benefits. “In Alberta, we have huge oil and gas development activity we didn’t have 15 years ago. We feel it’s necessary to assure the public that a regulator is on the job.”

Trained as both an electrical engineer and lawyer, McCrank moved from deputy justice minister to replace Celine Belanger as EUB chairman in 1998.

At the time, opposition to sour gas and natural gas flaring was spinning out of control, with wellsite vandalism on the rise. McCrank had barely settled into his chair when an energy industry executive was shot dead during an oil-related dispute in rural Alberta.

“Shellshock may not be the exact term but . . .when I arrived, I didn’t expect to find the situation as volatile and explosive as it was,” recalls McCrank.

“There was certainly a heck of a lot of concern being expressed by the public. Having said that, having been a prosecutor and deputy minister of justice, I was used to inflammatory situations.”

One EUB response was to create a blue-ribbon panel to investigate sour gas exploration and production practices. The panel came back with 87 recommendations. All were implemented.

“The review convinced us sour gas can be produced safely,” says McCrank, who points out that the 99 sour gas wells currently in production near Calgary have created few problems.

“My message is this: We will not approve projects unless we believe they can be conducted safely.”

Meanwhile, the Quebec-born son of an ore miner credits the industry for responding to public pressure by dramatically reducing flaring and venting volumes in recent years.

Nevertheless, many critics remain skeptical. For example, Andrew Nikiforuk, one of Western Canada’s sharpest and most credible journalists, has taken deadly aim at McCrank’s “naive” and “dead wrong” assertions regarding sour gas safety.

Despite the naysayers, however, McCrank’s conciliatory style seems to have knocked down at least a few barriers of public mistrust.

Nor does he lack evidence to back up his insistence that EUB decisions are made “absolutely independently” from the provincial energy ministry.

His supporters cite the EUB’s stand on gas-over- bitumen as Exhibit A. In 2003, the board ordered the shutdown of about two per cent of the province’s natural gas production, in the conviction that extraction of gas posed a serious risk to recovery of heavy oil from the Athabasca oil sands.

Despite protests from gas producers, the EUB never budged from the principle, though the authority eventually reduced the ban, ultimately halting production of 123 million cubic feet per day or slightly less than one per cent of Alberta production.

In McCrank’s view, the EUB honoured its mandate as guardian of provincial resources by making a call “regardless of political or business influence.”

“We weren’t prepared to take the risk (of jeopardizing bitumen production) on the part of the next generation of Albertans,” he says. “They will be the ones to reap the benefits of this decision.”

Meanwhile, McCrank and the EUB continue to walk a razor’s edge through such hot-button issues as coalbed methane and ongoing glitches in the electrical deregulation process.

Whatever happens, he’ll continue to sleep the sleep of the just.

“I think by and large we get things generally right,” says McCrank. “But not always.”

(Tom Keyser can be reached at tomk@businessedge.ca)