Leadership Role With Pathways Alliance A ‘Perfect Fit’ For Dilling
For our other story on Kendall Dilling and the Pathways Alliance, click on the link below:
Pathways Continues Advancing Pre-FEED; Working To Address Fiscal Policy And Regulatory Issues
Being appointed the president of the recently-formed Pathways Alliance, it would seem, was a logical and foreshadowed arc in the oil and gas-related career of Kendall Dilling.
That’s because throughout his 30 or so years of being involved in the oil and gas sector, he’s always had the mindset of balancing oil and gas project development with a keen eye on environmental and sustainability stewardship.
In other words, his skill set blended well with the requirements for the position of leading the Alliance, whose signature project is a proposed multibillion-dollar carbon capture and storage network that will capture CO2 from oilsands facilities and transport it to a hub in the Cold Lake area of Alberta for safe and permanent underground storage.
“Obviously, I had a bit of a front row seat to the genesis of Pathways with my previous role at [Cenovus Energy Inc.] which was one of the founding members. So I knew this was coming along and that they would be needing people to help,” Dilling told the DOB.
“For me, honestly, it’s a perfect fit for my career. I’ve been in oil and gas for 30 years but always with a kind of environmental, ESG and sustainability kind of focus.”
The original incarnation of the group was called the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero Alliance. It included Canadian Natural Resources Limited, Cenovus, ConocoPhillips Canada, Imperial Oil Limited, MEG Energy Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc.
Its aim was to achieve a phased reduction in emissions from oilsands operations, including net zero by 2050. That hasn’t changed, except they’ve added further expertise by bringing the Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) and the Oil Sands Community Alliance (OSCA) into the fold to form the new Pathways Alliance.
When the new unit was considered and ultimately established, Dilling was intrigued and put his name forward as a possible permanent, and inaugural, leader of the group. And he had the required credentials, including having previously served as the original Pathways Alliance interim director.
As president of the newly-formed entity, Dilling is responsible for overall co-ordination of external relations, technology and project development on behalf of the Pathways Alliance members.
With three decades of experience in the oil and gas industry, Dilling has expertise in various areas including, environment, regulatory, health and safety, Indigenous and stakeholder relations and surface land and business development.
At Cenovus he was vice-president, environment and regulatory. In that executive role, he was accountable for developing the company’s environment strategy, managing the regulatory process for major approvals and leading environmental policy development efforts with various levels of government.
Prior to joining Cenovus in 2012, Dilling worked in environmental consulting for various Canadian and multinational pipeline and energy companies.
“I started as a field biologist, in fact — literally out in the field collecting samples and doing assessments and really starting on that end of it. I feel like that’s really served me well over the years,” he said.
“As I went from there into working for various oil and gas companies and progressively into a management tract, I always had really maintained that fundamental passion around the environment and a core conviction that it’s not an either/or choice with resource development. We’re extremely fortunate as Canadians and as Albertans with the natural resource endowment that we have and I think developing those makes a ton of sense and gives so many benefits to so many people,” Dilling added.
“But we’ve thought of it for too long and for far too many years as an either/or with environmental protection. And it really isn’t a trade off. We can, and should, achieve both.”
The path forward
According to Dilling, the mandate of the Pathways Alliance is clear and focused.
“It’s to demonstrate that we can continue to develop, in this case the oilsands, for the benefit of all but while also being a huge part in addressing all environmental performance areas, but particularly with respect to greenhouse gas emissions because that’s been the Achilles’ heel of the oilsands in the past,” he said.
And Dilling is confident that he and the Pathways Alliance are up to the challenge.
“So I think through my whole career … it’s been building towards this sort of thing where we come together as an industry and say, ‘OK, listen. We’re going to apply our resources and our expertise and our capital and our execution abilities — all this that we have brought to bear to even make the oilsands a commercial resource over many, many decades — we now just twist that same ingenuity and get-it-done mentality that’s always existed in the oil and gas industry and attack this next problem, which is greenhouse gas emissions,’” Dilling added.
“So it’s just such a natural evolution. And it’s good to see companies coming together — to not compete — and recognize we’re all kind of measured, ultimately, on environmental performance. If someone doesn’t succeed, that reflects on everybody. And if somebody does have a big success, everybody gets the benefit of that,” he added.
“It’s not that we haven’t been doing that for years. It’s just that this is really that chance to put all that collaboration that we’ve always done in this space on steroids and develop some infrastructure jointly that’s going to solve this and crack the greenhouse gas nut that is too big for any one company or any one party to do on their own.”
New Pathways’ members assimilating well
Dilling said that the consolidation of the original industry group with COSIA and OSCA to form the new Pathways Alliance has been a seamless and natural fit.
“Honestly, it’s great. If you look at COSIA, as an example, they’ve been around for 10 years. So it’s not like collaboration on environmental matters [with industry] is new. But when you bring it in and put that under Pathways and connect that directly to the six CEOs, that’s the game-changer,” he said.
Dilling noted that the CEOs of the six oilsands companies that formed the membership of the original Oilsands Pathways to Net Zero group continue to be “all-in” and are leading by example.
“The six CEOs of Pathways have met every single week for almost two years now. And there’s no end in sight. That’s the level of personal engagement and commitment they have. So when you bring COSIA and OSCA into that —which … in and of themselves are successful organizations doing good work — under that single tent where we have one really unified voice on ESG matters and that direct pipeline to the CEOs, it’s just amazing,” he said.
“Personally, it’s been really exciting to see. Because the reality is absent that top-down commitment to leadership, despite the best intentions you can sometimes find yourself caught up in bureaucracy and not moving as quickly and aggressively as you want to,” Dilling added.
And while there are regulatory and fiscal policy hurdles still to be addressed before a final investment decision on the Pathways Alliance’s signature CCS project is reached, Dilling remains confident that the partners in the initiative will ultimately reach their end goal.
“The CEOs are fully committed to this and that it has to happen. And we have to show results soon. You can’t have a [net zero by] 2050 ambition and say, ‘Don’t worry, we’re working on technologies that are going to fix that in the 2040s.’ No one will give you that runway,” he said.
“So Pathways is obviously about delivering a good chunk of this — up to one-third by 2030 — and then with that kind of demonstration I think you get more runway and more support from all stakeholders to continue down the rest of the journey.”
Working with other industry groups
Dilling said an important function of his duties as Pathways Alliance president is working in lock-step with industry associations such as the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada (EPAC).
“I think it’s critical that we work together very closely — CAPP for sure, and there are many others on the list of associations and/or other groups in the ecosystem that have an interest and a role to play. So for me in my job that’s a huge area of focus,” he said.
“Specifically with respect to CAPP, Lisa Baiton, their new president and CEO and I have met several times and are completely planning to be aligned as we tackle these challenges. Tristan Goodman [president and CEO] at EPAC is equally as important and we’re working closely with them, as well as many, many others.”
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