January 2008 Issue
OBITUARIES
Ronald Sydney Bullen, P.Eng.
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RONALD SYDNEY BULLEN, P.ENG. -photo courtesy the U of A Engineer |
Ronald Sydney Bullen, P.Eng., a visionary and international broker in the Alberta oil industry, and a past winner of an APEGGA Summit Award, died in a small plane crash with two other men, Oct. 26 near Invermere, B.C. He was 69.
Mr. Bullen, the pilot of the plane, was claimed along with two other Calgary men, Bill Wood, 63, and Mr. Wood’s son, David, 37. Mr. Bullen was about to attempt an emergency landing at Invermere when the plane went down.
Raised on his family’s farm in the Peace River country, Mr. Bullen took his schooling via correspondence. He didn’t see the inside of a classroom until the latter years of high school.
Apparently, that was no hindrance. Mr. Bullen was an astute learner — so much so he received the Governor General’s Award for top marks in the province in Grade 9. He went on to graduate from the University of Alberta in 1961 with a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering.
Mr. Bullen’s career accomplishments are many. Most notable are the introduction of liquid carbon dioxide for pipeline testing and well stimulation, and the co-founding of Canadian Fracmaster, an oil and gas service and production company. Fracmaster was one of Canada’s largest downhole service companies, supplying fracturing, acidizing, coil tubing and cementing.
Mr. Bullen also earned quite a few accolades during his career. He is the only person to have earned two Canada Excellence Awards in one year, and he also won the Frank Spragins Technical Summit Award from APEGGA in 1988.
In the early 1980s, when the oil industry was struggling in Canada, Mr. Bullen sought a deal with the Soviet Union to export oil recovery equipment and expertise in exchange for a share of the incremental oil produced.
His foray resulted into the first joint venture ever between the Soviet state oil company and a western company, under the banner Uganskfracmaster.
Mr. Bullen’s work in Russia was not complete, after the obligations of the venture were met. He invested some $5 million directly into the Siberian community, buying hospital equipment, building kindergartens, supplying police forces with Western-made security gear and medicines, and building a 140-suite apartment building for oilfield workers.
After leaving Fracmaster in 1992, Mr. Bullen returned to Russia to build hotels and housing in the Black Sea region. He was also in the process of building a 400-unit gated resort community in Poland, and, with the aid of his son-in-law, 35 large aircraft hangars at the Calgary Springbank Airport.
Mr. Bullen loved to fly, his family said, calling it one of his life’s passions. In fact it was the family’s wish that The PEGG publish the photo of him in his plane’s cockpit that appears with this obituary.
Mr. Bullen is survived by his three sons, his daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren, his mother, a brother and sister, and a host of extended family. A tree will be planted in his honour in Fish Creek Provincial Park in Calgary.