By Amanda Stephenson
CALGARY, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Professional engineer Luis Cabana couldn’t take a walk in downtown Calgary in the mid-2000s without someone he knew calling out to him in Spanish.
Office towers in the corporate heart of Canada’s oil and gas sector were at the time heavily populated with Venezuelan expats who had fled persecution and economic stagnation in their home country.
Wintry and vast, Canada is geographically far from the heat and humidity of Venezuela. But the oil sands of northern Alberta and Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt produce a remarkably similar variety of thick, tar-like heavy crude, a fact that over the decades prompted thousands of Venezuela’s best and brightest engineers, scientists and geologists to move to cities like Calgary, Edmonton and Fort McMurray.
“We were over-represented. I knew another professional at every single company downtown,” said Cabana, who came to Canada in 2006 and spent more than a decade in project management positions in Canada’s energy sector.
These expats helped Canada develop its oil sands and become the world’s largest producer of heavy crude, even as Venezuela’s own oil production declined. And in spite of U.S. President Donald Trump’s stated goal to revive Venezuela’s oil industry, many Venezuelans who built careers in Canada say they are unlikely to return to the country of their birth as they have built lives elsewhere.
Trump’s move to revive Venezuela’s oil industry has sparked anxiety in Canada, as an increase in heavy oil supply from Venezuela could displace some of the oil that refiners in the United States buy from Canada.
A significant increase in Venezuelan output is unlikely for years, however, because U.S. companies are reluctant to invest in big-ticket, multi-year projects without signs of long-term political stability and a new legal framework with wide endorsement in the South American country.
CHAVEZ REGIME, OIL STRIKE PROMPTED EXODUS
Reuters spoke to four Venezuelans in Canada, each of whom came to the country during one of several waves of migration starting in the early 2000s. One of the most significant occurred between 2001 and 2010, after the rise of Hugo Chavez’s regime, and following a massive strike at state-owned oil company PDVSA and the resulting collapse of the Venezuelan oil industry.
Some of the 7,450 Venezuelans who – according to federal statistics – came to Canada during that period had occupied senior roles at PDVSA. Chemist Pedro Pereira, who had been director of PDVSA’s technology strategy and was blacklisted by the Venezuelan government after the strike, took a position at the University of Calgary where he led nanotechnology research for oil sands applications. He also recruited dozens of other Venezuelans with expertise in heavy oil to join him.
“I ended up producing technology not for Venezuela – which was the country that paid abundantly for the education of all these people – but for Canada,” said Pereira, who today runs his own Calgary-based tech company focused on renewable energy.
Many other Venezuelans migrated to the oil sands hub of Fort McMurray, a small, northern Alberta city surrounded by boreal forest.
“When I got there it was minus 35 (Celsius), and when I left Caracas, it was plus 25, so it was a bit of a shock,” said Lino Carrillo, who had worked in heavy oil processing and refining in Venezuela before being recruited by Canada’s Suncor Energy in 2004.
Venezuela’s oil industry decline coincided with the growth of Canada’s, as the early part of this century was a period of significant oil sands expansion driven by high oil prices and technological breakthroughs.
“People appreciated the Venezuelan knowledge,” said Carrillo. “I believe Canada would have accomplished what it did with the development of the oil sands anyway, but what they did was they brought in people with 15, 20 years of experience and that helped shortcut the path.”
WAVE OF REVERSE MIGRATION UNLIKELY
Carrillo, who worked in a number of senior oil sands management positions and is now retired, maintains close ties to Venezuela and even worked directly on the development of opposition party leader Maria Machado’s energy platform.
Machado, who fled the South American nation in a daring seaborne escape in December, is competing for Trump’s ear with members of Venezuela’s government and seeking to ensure she has a role in governing the nation going forward.
Many expats say even if Venezuela begins to rebuild its oil industry and returns to democracy, a reverse wave of migration from Canada’s oil sands back to the Orinoco Belt is unlikely.
“Venezuelan expats have lots of conversations about ‘will they go back, how can they help their country recover,'” said Pereira. “But it’s two generations that have passed now, and the ones that have expertise, most of them are at least 55 years old.”
(Reporting by Amanda Stephenson in Calgary; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Nia Williams)
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