July 06, 2017
The second year of the ISA Edmonton Section Mentorship Program was a tremendous success. A total of 9 mentees graduated from the program last month; one mentee has started his own business and another is developing a new technology for pipeline leak detection.
A special thanks to Andy Bahniuk, ISA Edmonton Section Program Director & Mentor, and DCS Specialist at Shell Canada Limited, for hooking our mentees and mentors up with a behind the scenes look at Shell Scotford's Upgrader SAC building. The tour was held on Friday, June 23 and included the control, rack and engineering support rooms. Following the tour we headed to Original Joe's in Fort Saskatchewan for a Mentorship Program Wind-Up - we were amazed at the positive feedback and the many success stories we heard from both mentees and mentors.
Here are two of our favourite stories that we'd like to share with you...
Success Story #1 - From Students To Enterprising Contractors
ISA Edmonton Section Mentee, Louay El Choufi (left) with Andy Bahniuk, his ISA Edmonton Section Mentor (middle), and Tony Abitegeka, his business partner (right).
Louay El Choufi, ISA Edmonton Section Mentee, is entering his final year of Petroleum Engineering and he's already getting a taste of what it's like to be an enterprising contractor! Along with his business partner, Tony Abitegeka, the two are part of an oil & gas consulting start-up made up of 7 Petroleum Engineering grads, NEXOV. NEXOV is a division of New Paradigm Engineering Ltd owned by U of A Petroleum & Chemical Engineering Professor, Bruce Peachy. Peachy has over 40 years of experience in oil and gas related engineering and acts as a mentor and supervisor for any work that falls under his company. He also reviews all projects before they are delivered to clients.
El Choufi and Abitegeka, along with Shlok Srivastava, another member of the start-up and Andy's ISA Edmonton Section Mentee from 2015/2016, are currently working on securing a coal mine methane contract with an overseas company!
Success Story #2 - Pipeline Leak Detection New Technology
Gordon Meyer, ISA Edmonton Section Mentor (left) with Ying Xiong, his ISA Edmonton Section Mentee (right)
Ying Xiong, ISA Edmonton Section Mentorship Program Mentee & PhD student at the University of Alberta is in the process of developing a new technology for Pipeline Leak Detection! Gordon Meyer, Manager of Automation (SCADA) for Suncor Energy Logistics Corporation, was her mentor this past year and has jumped on board to help her out further. His automation team at Suncor has agreed to assist with her project by testing her technology on a pipeline.
The pair were tight-lipped about what's in the works, but did say that this technology will be in development for another 1 to 2 years. We will be sure to post a follow-up story on this!
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