All Carbon, All the Time

Wishart Robson, senior climate change and safety adviser, Nexen Inc.

Mar 1, 2010

by Craille Maguire Gillies

Manitoba-born Wishart Robson has lived in more places than most people have visited. He’s worked in the fisheries in British Columbia, spent almost a decade on mining, forestry and oil and gas projects in Yukon and was with Halliburton and Petro-Canada, those latter positions taking him to 50 countries and as far away as Nigeria, Australia, the North Sea and Hibernia. Now in Calgary, Robson is the climate change consultant for energy company Nexen Inc., which trades primarily in oil and gas. He still travels a lot – about 150 days a year. Last December, Robson visited Copenhagen to attend the United Nations climate change talks. On the final day, as Barack Obama and other heads of state tried to seal a deal, we spoke with him about his unusual career trajectory, what COP15 means for Alberta’s business community and how the heck an oil and gas man becomes a climate change consultant.

AV: What does your day look like?
WR: If it involves carbon, it probably comes across my desk at some point. What are the regulations in Alberta and Saskatchewan, in the United States? What are the regulations in the North Sea, where Nexen has offshore operations? Then there’s carbon markets. Are we going to be in a regime where [there’s] a carbon tax or cap-and-trade where we might have to find different ways to manage our carbon reductions? Or is it going to be a market-based situation with other forms of compliance? How does Nexen make direct emission reductions? What does it cost us… versus going to market and buying credit? I also get involved in technical things such as carbon capture and storage from our facilities, where we compress and re-inject it into very secure, deep underground formations.

Do you self-identify as an environmentalist?
I’m a person who manages environmental issues. My job is to make sure that the implications of any of these issues, whether it’s an environmental or a safety issue, are known to executive, management and operations people so they can make business decisions.

Is there ever resistance to the environmental information you share?
Because Nexen is learning-based, there’s pretty broad willingness to consider the risks and opportunities. We’re always adapting to new geographic locations, technologies, new opportunities. We’re not in the business of arguing science but we do want to understand the impacts on our business and our shareholders’ investments. My job is to educate people in the company on the issues and to identify the impacts on our projects, our assets and opportunities in the future.

You were at the Kyoto talks in 1997. What’s different now?
I think people went into Kyoto with a fair amount of optimism but not a lot of understanding about how difficult it would be to change the energy system in a relatively short period. To change the global energy system could be 40 or $50 trillion. They’re looking for large amounts of money to come from private sectors and from shareholders to undertake those investments. If you’re going to set out to change that energy system, there’s going to be winners and losers, and it’s going to change what kind of energy you have and how much energy you have to run your economy.

What is the local reaction to climate change regulations?
The business community in Alberta would like certainty around carbon tax or some price on carbon so we’ll know our costs and compliance options. In Alberta, we have access to a technology fund to manage carbon obligations. We pay into the fund, and the fund is reinvested in technologies that will reduce emissions or improve energy efficiency.

Any theories on the solution?
We need a technology fix to this, not just lifestyle changes. It will take very different technologies for how we produce and use energy. Technology funds or carbon taxes could create pools of capital to stimulate massive investment. This is a massive amount of investment. I can’t even begin to think how much money $40 trillion is. But you have to start somewhere.