As co-discoverer of the Ladyfern natural gas field in northeastern B.C., Calgary’s Tom Boreen has earned his reputation as one the sharpest exploration geologists around. He’s the type who can write his own ticket.

But Boreen was so intrigued when he heard about Suncor Energy’s creative new push in natural gas exploration, he contacted Suncor VP Roger Smith and asked whether his team had room for one more.

Smith’s no fool. He stuck out his hand and said: ‘Welcome aboard.’

Boreen joined Suncor’s two-year-old prospect generation services (PGS) group six months ago and he’s having the time of his life.

Mike Sturk photos, Business Edge
Tom Boreen is an enthusiastic partner on Suncor VP Roger Smith’s team of experts searching for new sources of gas.

“This is the only group in town that’s doing high-end scientific exploration within the industry,” said Boreen. “When I found out what they were doing, I actively sought them out.”

Led by Smith, Suncor’s 15-member team of experts has been handed a mandate to crank high-end gas exploration and research efforts into overdrive.

The reason is no mystery. As Canada’s fourth-largest oil producer/refiner, Suncor expects to produce 215,000 barrels a day this year from its northern Alberta oilsands operations.

Those barrels will roll out at an operating cost of $11.75 a barrel, much of which represents the cost of natural gas needed to fire the projects.

“Prospect generation services is helping to provide a natural hedge within the organization,” Smith explained. “Our E&P (exploration and production) side wants to find and produce as much gas as we ever expect to consume within the organization . . . and that’s a lot.”



Over the long term, Suncor’s appetite for gas will only intensify. As new production facilities ramp up, Suncor oilsands are projected to crank out more than 500,000 barrels a day by 2012, at the latest.

Suncor’s response to the situation smacks of genius. With the enthusiastic blessing of CEO Rick George and Executive VP Dave Byler (natural gas/renewable energy), the PGS team was created with a mandate to become an independent and sustainable profit centre.

Smith has been granted the luxury of a long leash. And his group has been challenged on a twofold basis: to seek out new sources for natural gas production while covering its own costs by entrepreneurial means.

Smith and his group got started by identifying fresh exploration prospects on undeveloped leases already held by the company. Then they marketed them, farming them out to external companies lacking the manpower or expertise to hunt up their own properties. “We work to develop prospects and opportunities. Then we take them to the street to find companies that are interested in drilling them,” said Smith.

After dealing most of Suncor’s existing leases, prospect generation services started to buy new lands as well as to reprocess voluminous stores of seismic data with new technological tools. Intense geological analysis leads to the generation of new exploration opportunities, which are again marketed on the street.

“We end up with cash and reserves from the deal, which go back into our natural gas pot,” said Boreen. Word of Suncor’s unique strategy has been greeted enthusiastically by small companies with plenty of cash but no way to access high-end scientific data analysis.

And larger outfits, which have drastically cut their own exploration budgets, are also taking the bait. “People are coming to us,” said Boreen.

All Suncor’s exploration efforts are currently centered in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, from which most of the shallow easy pickings have been tapped.

But according to Boreen, who shares credit for the winter 2000 discovery of Ladyfern with colleague Kevin Colquhoun, there’s plenty more where that came from.

“There are more big discoveries to be made, no question,” he said. “And the resource just keeps getting more and more valuable. We don’t talk about ‘if we hit another monster field,’ we talk about ‘when we hit it.’ ”

Although Ladyfern didn’t turn out to be quite the motherlode it was touted to be, it remains the largest onshore gas discovery North America has seen in 20 years.

And the geological strategy used to find it has been described by Boreen as a conceptual breakthrough.

Though he wasn’t working on Suncor’s behalf at that time, Boreen and his new colleagues apply those same up-to-the-minute techniques while tending to the painstaking scientific study of 3D seismic data from their own properties.

If things turn out the way Smith and Boreen think they will, Suncor oilsands processors will gorge on a steady diet of natural gas for decades to come.