February 2008 ISSUE
 |
KEYSER FILE
From the Locker Room
To the Board Room
BY TOM KEYSER
Freelance Columnist
He was a hockey-playing technologist, back in the day. Now Dan O’Neil, P.Eng., is the CEO of one of Calgary’s hot young energy companies.
 |
DAN O’NEIL, P.Eng. . . . |
After a lengthy stint in the Nepean, Ont., minor hockey system, one future APEGGA member and Alberta energy man had advanced all the way to Junior A. But Dan O’Neil, P.Eng., was about “hockeyed out” by the early 1980s, when he moved to Calgary to sign on as a civil technologist with a now-defunct energy firm.
Despite a lack of oil and gas experience, Mr. O’Neil got off to a strong start, looking after rigs and well completions in the field.
Then his boss summoned him to corporate HQ. What was this about? A big promotion? A serious reprimand?
No. Mr. O’Neil was needed on the in-house hockey team, of course.
“The boss said, ‘Why do you think I hired you?’ He was pulling my leg but I guess my hockey career wasn’t quite finished after all,” Mr. O’Neil says with a smile. Eventually, he really did get to hang up those skates and graduate to bigger things.
Significantly bigger, actually. But in a small way.
Big Growth, Small Company
These days, Mr. O’Neil is president and CEO of Breaker Energy Ltd., one
of the hottest juniors in the energy and petroleum sector and an emerging
darling of industry analysts.
Investors have noticed. Who wouldn’t be impressed by 12 consecutive quarters of production growth on a per-share basis?
Breaker Energy entered the game just over three years ago, with zero production and only $11 million in start-up cash. But Mr. O’Neil’s over-achieving public company made a brisk start, climbing from $100,000 in sales to a startling $52 million in just 24 months.
Success, of course, isn’t unusual for APEGGA members who become managers.
A graduate of the Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology, Mr. O’Neil joins a long list of APEGGA members who acquired a broad range of expertise on the technical side before moving up to leadership roles within the oilpatch. Names that spring to mind include Gwyn Morgan, P.Eng., of EnCana, Robert Brawn, P.Eng., of Turbo Resources, Clay Riddell, P.Geol., of Paramount Energy, Harvey Doerr, P.Eng., of Murphy Oil Canada, and Charlie Fischer, P.Eng., of Nexen.
The modest Mr. O’Neil, however, would be reluctant to include himself on
such a distinguished roster. Nor is he interested in creating the next energy
super-conglomerate. He tends to believe small is good.
Despite its success, Breaker Energy employs fewer than 30 salaried staff — Mr.
O’Neil operates best in a family atmosphere. And he surrounds himself with
trusted colleagues, many of whom worked with him in one or more past lives.
The expertise he’s developed and the success he’s gained are impressive. And to start with, Mr. O’Neil had no energy grounding.
Like many aspiring engineers, Mr. O’Neil could barely tell a pump jack from a palomino when he moved to Calgary. He did, however, learn quickly. And he found that he enjoyed the work immensely.
Getting the Degree
Using the savvy of the CEO he would become, Mr. O’Neil took advantage of
a price downtown in the mid-1980s to move to Montana and pursue a degree in petroleum
engineering. He landed it in 1988 and was subsequently hired by Alberta Energy
Company.
Eventually, he became vice-president of the key Grande Prairie business unit, making him also responsible for operations in Fort St. John — including the fabled Ladyfern gas play. Later he assumed command of onshore exploration for the company.
Things were great. But when AEC pulled off its $30-billion merger with PanCanadian in early 2002, the bloom faded.
Suddenly Mr. O’Neil was one of 6,000 employees. He didn’t particularly enjoy the feeling and decided to take six months off.
After a conversation with a respected friend named Rob Leach — now chairman of the Breaker board — Mr. O’Neil began thinking small again. Before long, a stellar team of ex-AEC people had come forward and Breaker Energy was on its way.
“Rob and I saw eye to eye on a business model,” Mr. O’Neil says today. “And we attracted a strong technical team, the cream of the crop from a big shop.”
From the start, the company sought to acquire so-called unloved assets, a strategy that’s paid off during a period of buoyant oil prices. Breaker operates 95 per cent of its own properties (the oil-to-gas ratio is about 50-50), currently producing about 5,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day, enabling the company to control its destiny. As the operator of a given asset, Breaker’s executive group needn’t use valuable time canvassing joint-venture partners, whenever major decisions must be made quickly.
In the past three years, Breaker has faced a lot of challenges, among them a competitive industry, high service costs, and most recently the significant increases proposed for royalties in Alberta. Breaker has been able to grow the company through these challenges, however, and is well positioned with its people and business plan to continue to grow in the future.
And that’s quite a success story, for a hockey player from Nepean and his Alberta team.