Program Item Details
TITLE: Bill Hunter, President and Chief Operating Officer, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc
SUBJECT: #51 How Alberta-Pacific changed the way they impact the land
SYNOPSIS: When Alberta-Pacific's President Bill Hunter took a look at projections for the impact of new energy activity in his company's forest management area in northeastern Alberta, he knew something had to be done quickly to change the situation. The forest was losing almost as many trees to seismic lines, cutlines, roads and wellsites as it was to logging. The cumulative impact would soon be devastating to both the economic viability of his company as well as the ecological sustainability of the boreal forest. Working with a team of biologists and foresters, and armed with an innovative science-based concept called Integrated Landscape Management, Bill Hunter set out to change the way industries do business on the land.
AUDIO: Download Audio (mp3 format)
TRANSCRIPT:
Intro: What do you do as head of forest company when your main competition for the trees is the energy sector? With all the new oil sands activity in northeastern Alberta, the energy sector is cutting almost as much forest as the logging companies. For Bill Hunter, the President and Chief Operating Officer of Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries, there was only one way to change this scenario. That was to get the energy and forestry sectors working together. Otherwise there would be no way to manage the boreal forest for environmental and economic sustainability. Working with a team of biologists and foresters, Bill Hunter set out to spread the word about a new way of doing business...Integrated Landscape Management.
Bill Hunter
BH: Ecosystem management was a sound principle. We base the way we do things on science and research so there's technical validation for what we're doing. And we're very committed to that. But as we made observations around our forest management area, we found we're not the only player on the landbase. And in fact, energy was a very significant co-user of the FMA that we've been awarded as a company.
In the early years we happened to stumble across a research project funded by DMI over in the Peace River area, working with Dr. Brad Stelfox. And what they were interested in was the same us. There is intervention and conflict on the land base from the energy sector. They really wanted to assess what that was doing in totality on their FMA So they achieved a certain understanding and worked with Dr. Stelfox and came to a conclusion and then terminated their opportunity for that specific project.
Through our environmental science team at Al-Pac we picked up on this project, it had been in the works, and we were very interested in the methodology and philosophical approach to how we assess the impacts on the land base. So we could quickly grabbed Dr. Stelfox and asked him to come and look at our huge FMA as his next project opportunity. And through the ALCES model which you've talked about previously on your show, there was a very onerous overburden of exercising and activities by different development opportunities in the FMA. So we took that, massaged it, and went to the energy sector and some of the other solid wood sector industries and said, you know, give us some numbers that you think are relevant to your activities on the landbase, and sort of enhanced the opportunity of ALCES. And then when the results all came in, we said oh, we have to do something here.
CC: ONCE YOU HAD A LOOK AT THESE FIGURES, IT SOUNDS LIKE IT MUST HAVE BEEN PRETTY OVERWHELMING. HOW DID YOU DEAL WITH THAT THEN?
BH: Well we tried to rationalize what was fictional, what was factional. And when we were pretty confident in the information being presented by the models, and we tried many different variations and data banks, we decided that we needed to approach the energy companies. And the best way to do that is face to face with industry, not to go through a government set of protocols to raise this issue. But just to go down in a non-controversial approach to some of the boardrooms in Calgary and say, look we've just stumbled across some data and we'd like your opinion on what it means to you.
And taking that approach was very frugal, because a lot of people down there were very surprised and shocked by the same data that we were looking at and agreed that something should be done.
CC: WHAT WAS THE MOST SHOCKING THING TO YOU?
BH: When we put in the numbers that said there was going to be a significant increase in development by oil and gas players and some of the oil sands players, the drop off in available annual cut dropped off significantly. In a much shorter time than we ever envisioned . And you have to realize we're working on a 200 year planning horizon. So we look out that far and it was just overwhelming.
CC: I DON'T THINK IT WAS A PIECE OF CAKE, THOUGH, BRING PEOPLE OVER TO SEE THINGS FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS THAT YOU'VE HAD TO DO IN ORDER TO BRING OUT THIS IDEA ABOUT INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT AND TO REALLY BRING ALONG OTHER INDUSTRIES?
BH: You're right, it wasn't a piece of cake. It takes a lot of hard work and a lot of discipline. So when we presented these cases, we knew that to enhance the opportunities for energy players by individual companies, to get engaged and look for ways to minimize our foot print that we leave through our development, we had to find a business case. We had to find the dollars and cents reasons why you can do this. The obvious benefit is the ecosystem itself.
So we were approached by Gulf which is now Conoco. They were looking for some data and some mappings in the Surmount area. And as we talked to them and we knew that we wanted to start entertaining these joint ventures with different energy companies to look how we could minimize the footprint, we were able through the efforts of Shawn Wasel and his team to negotiate with Gulf-Surmount that we could overlay our planning horizons, have a look at it just from an ecosystem management point of view, knowing full well that there was infrastructure redundancy from the two companies.
The end of that little exercise, we saw a 50 percent reduction in road requirements by the two companies in the same area and over $2 million dollars savings in totality.
CC: WELL, TWO MILLION DOLLARS IN SAVINGS, THAT'S NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT. IS THAT THE SORT OF THING YOU CAN SEE IN OTHER INSTANCES?
BH: Oh absolutely. But there has to be a carrot. And it takes strong leadership and it takes those little models of perfection that people can believe in and have confidence in. And once you can show there's an environmental reason for doing it, and there's a business case for doing it, actually the lights go on quite quickly across the boreal forest. With the Gulf-Surmount as our model and my term as president of the ACR and having already done our homework in the boardrooms in Calgary, through the Chamber of Resources, we established a blue ribbon steering committee on the potential of Integrated Landscape Management. And that was the birth of the program, actually, through the Chamber.
CC: DAVID PARK WHO IS THE HEAD OF TRUENORTH ENERGY TALKS ABOUT A GET TOGETHER THAT YOU AND HE HAD WHERE YOU REALLY LAID IT ON THE LINE ABOUT INTEGRATED LANDSCAPE MANAGEMENT, OVER A BOTTLE OF WINE A BELIEVE.
BH: I think it was a cabernet if I can remember. But, actually, in truth we did have the Gulf-Surmount project as our leading model. But we knew with the forecasted development of oil sands in the boreal that we needed a few more model companies to come in with Al-Pac and really look at the opportunities around ILM.
TrueNorth, their parent company is Koch, and I met David Park as a fellow board member with the Chamber of Resources. His progressive sort of slant on how he wanted to do his development for their particular oil sands mine, I said maybe this is another candidate for another really good ILM model. So I set it up that I could buy Mr. Park a dinner at the Hotel MacDonald, in exchange for his time, just to listen to the story and see if there was something in his development plans that could incorporate Integrated Landscape Management.
One of the key discussions at the dinner, besides the quality of the wine, was the opportunity to enhance his EIA process for his development using the concept of best practices and ILM. And he was very, very in tune and quite supportive and actually quite excited about getting involved.
CC: WHERE HAVE YOU TAKEN THIS NOW?
BH: Well, it's now gone out of the boreal northeast into the boreal northwest and also down on the eastern slopes. More and more people through the Chamber are getting excited about the business case and the opportunity just to plan together and to see if we can minimize the imprint.
As far as my own company, we started out with two models of joint venture opportunities. And we're now up to eleven. And that's just over the course of the year. To do that, we had to take one of our senior planners in our woodlands group and second him to what we call the Integrated Landscape Management Team (Al-Pac). And it's his responsibility through requests for dispositions on the landbase to work with these different companies and show them that there are more and more opportunities. And it's a raging fire of enthusiasm right now.
CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
BH: Thanks again.
Bill Hunter is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc and Past-President of the Alberta Chamber of Resources.
FEATURED LINK: Al-Pac
FEATURED LINK: Alberta Chamber of Resources