heat required for extraction and the CO
2
made in the refining process. I don’t think
that’s going to be really great for the future
of Alberta unless we do things to mitigate
CO
2
.”
The answer was to come up with a process
that would refine the oil, capture the CO
2
for use in enhanced oil recovery and then
leave any remaining CO
2
underground, ren-
dering it harmless. The solution wasn’t en-
tirely new. Large oil producers in the U.S.
were using a similar process of enhanced
oil recovery based on naturally occurring
CO
2
but in Western Canada there wasn’t
any of this type of naturally occurring CO
2
.
That meant there wasn’t an enhanced oil
recovery industry even though there were
plenty of reservoirs. “We lacked the CO
2
required to get the trapped oil out. That
was the opportunity: capture the man-
made CO
2
from the refining process and
use it for EOR,” MacGregor explained.
“All the big guys were saying nobody but
us can build refineries,” he said. “I love it,
ever since I was a little kid, when some-
body tells you can’t do something, that’s
what I want to do.”
More than a decade later, the final result
is within reaching distance. Much of the
credit goes to Canadian Natural who Mac-
Gregor describes as “the best partner you
Ian MacGregor, President and Chairman of North West Refining Inc.
22 business elite canada
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FEBRUARY 2017
