PetroChina Supervisors Soak Up Alberta Refinery Know-How

Twenty employees of China's biggest oil company will wrap up a round of executive training in Edmonton on Friday.

The group of PetroChina refinery supervisors came to Alberta to take a course from Carver PA Corporation, an HR firm headquartered on 148th Street and 119th Avenue.

"In terms of asset management, there seem to be many things we, possibly, can learn from our counterparts in Canada," said PetroChina's Li Huaibin through an interpreter.

Liang Gaubin, another manager taking the training, said that the visit carries no strategic message about Chinese interest in acquiring more Albertan energy assets.

In January PetroChina, controlled by the Chinese government and the third largest company in the world by market capitalization, paid $680 million to Athabasca Oil Sands Corp. to acquire complete control of the MacKay River oilsands project northwest of Fort McMurray. Sinopec, another state-owned Chinese energy firm, paid $2.2 billion to acquire Calgary-based Daylight Energy in December.

"We're technical people and management people," said Gaubin of the all-male group of managers. "We don't have anything to do with the strategic decisions of the company."

The event seemed to mix work and pleasure in equal measure, with the PetroChina employees taking plentiful photographs and enjoying a catered lunch following presentations from Paul Vander Valk, a senior engineer with Cenovus, and David Xiao, MLA for Edmonton-McClung.

"It's our job to promote trade and partnership between Alberta and the rest of the world. That includes China especially," said Xiao in English after delivering a lengthy address in Mandarin.

The PetroChina employees will tour Husky Energy's Lloydminster refinery on Friday. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing controls roughly 70 per cent of Husky's voting shares.

Paul Lanthier, vice-president of operations for Carver, conducted the training through a translator.

"They're sponges. Their thirst for information is wonderful," Lanthier said. "They also have the impression that we're so much further than them in their abilities in Canada. We are quite good in Canada, but they're not that bad over there either.

"Canada has this mystique out there, which is kind of nice for us."