This article was originally published in the Financial Post.
By Jack Mintz, September 1, 2023
Canada’s Environment and Climate Change Minister, Steven Guilbeault, couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Suncor’s CEO, Rich Kruger — not even as the minister visits China, the biggest GHG emitter of all. Tuesday, he criticized Kruger’s recent statement that Suncor has been focusing too much on the energy transition and not enough on its core business. Using this as a pretext, Guilbeault made clear that his government’s made-up cap on oil and gas emissions — an arbitrary 42 per cent reduction by 2030 — is even more necessary to force companies to comply than he had been arguing. Let’s see how he does persuading his Chinese hosts to stop building two new coal plants every week.
Kruger is being misinterpreted. Suncor’s operational and safety performance have been miserable in the past five years and it shows. Its share price is still below where it was five years ago even though its competitors’ share prices have zoomed up during the same period. Imperial Oil (where I was once a board member) has seen its share price grow 75 per cent since 2018, soaring past Suncor’s. Kruger learned from his successful years at Exxon, the biggest oil company in the world, that operational excellence and a strong safety record are key indicators of superior management. If Suncor fails to improve its performance in the near term, it won’t have the money to pay for future energy transition projects.
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