The Westerner for July 11, 2011

Posted by Brian F. Thompson 
on Jul 11, 2011
 

Meeting:  Chair - Sherry; Music - Jerome; Grace - Sherry

Attendance / Guests - 32, including Cathie Graves-Evans, Wendy Mitchell, William Betteridge (Edmonton Riverview), Daryl Ripley, DGE Kevin Hilgers (Grande Prairie), Dave Wilson 

50/50 Draw:  With only 5 pairs remaining, Doug Macdougall and Mike Henry failed to match cards, thus making for a good pot next time.

Happy Birthday:  Members sang Happy Birthday to Bill Arnold who will turn 98 (on the golf course) on Wednesday, July 13th.  Best wishes also to Cheryl Bauer on July 12th and to Grace Young on July 18th (we can sing to Grace next Monday).

Erika Rudolph is in the palliative care unit at the General Hospital. 

Annual Dues:  Please don't write just one cheque to cover dues, donation to the Rotary Foundation and/or Gift Cards from Safeway, Sobeys or Saveon.   Each of these are separate transactions for accounting purposes, plus the donation to the Rotary Foundation is eligible for a charitable donation receipt (so the information on your cheque is the information required by the foundation to issue the receipt).  The invoices were generated by ClubRunner and once they were generated, they could not be revised, hence the misleading total at the top and at the bottom.  Please accept our apologies for any confusion caused by those numbers.

Thank You Letter - Sherry read a letter from the Edmonton Public School Board thanking us for our support of programs at James Gibbons, Lansdowne and Athlone Schools.

Program - Chris Gowers introduced Dave Wilson who is a neighbor of Chris, and who is a senior executive of a company called FourQuest Energy.

FourQuest Energy is an international company founded in Edmonton, with offices in Edmonton, Calgary, Abu Dhabi (UAE), and Atyrau (Kazakhstan).  FourQuest offers the following services to its Clients:

  •  Fluid pumping

  • Steam Blowing

  • Air Services

  • Oil Flushing

  • Chemical Cleaning

  • Nitrogen Services

  • Engineering & Procedure Writing

  • Filtration and Heating

  • Pigging & Testing

Dave is a long time member of the oil industry, having worked for FracMaster for roughly 25 years in many different parts of the world.  FracMaster was a successful Canadian (Albertan) company which ran into some growth-related financial problems in the early 90's and got taken over by an American company. 

Dave and three other industry veterans got together and formed FourQuest roughly 5 years ago.  The company has achieved success by building repeat business with major clients such as Suncor and Shell.  In fact, FourQuest is a nominee for the Ernst and Young New Entrepeneur of the Year Award, and they were nominated by their bank - HSBC.

Clearly Dave is sensitive to the environmental impact of the Oil industry and provided several examples of how they are systematically getting better at doing things in a more cost-effective and less environmentally impactful way.  It is also clear that Dave believes that Canadian entrepeneurs can do as well or better than our counterparts in any other country.

Dave was thanked for his interesting presentation by Bill Buckham.