Lac La Biche’s Portage College will be the first school in the province to offer a SAGD Operator program, which will soon be taking applications for a fall start.
Timing the announcement to coincide with Canada Water Week, Portage College President Dr Trent Keough introduced the new program on March 19 at a ceremony in the school’s McGrane Theatre. Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage, called SAGD or in situ, is a technique that uses superheated steam to loosen deeply buried bitumen deposits so they can be sucked up to the surface and then refined.
With over a hundred lakes dotting the landscape and numerous SAGD operations in and around the area, it’s a natural fit for a Lac La Biche County institution to boast Alberta’s first SAGD Operator program, Keough said.
“This particular program focuses on water utilization in the SAGD fields that are just beyond us to the north,” Keough said. “While working with industry partners, we recognized that 80 per cent of the industry relative to the oil sands – and 100 per cent with SAGD operations – is about the use and the reuse of water”
The program, which would operate initially out of the Lac La Biche campus, offers a third-class power engineering certification along with the SAGD specialization. Keough said the curriculum was closely developed with Devon Canada – the company that operates the Jackfish 1 and 2 SAGD projects northeast of Lac La Biche near Conklin.
“We saw it as an opportunity for the college to focus on water use, water re-use and training for power engineers who want to go work in the SAGD industry,” Keough said, noting that only a small fraction of existing power engineering training focuses on SAGD. “There’s a deficit there – and part of our role as a public college is to identify training deficits and fill that deficit with appropriately skilled people.”
NEW FOCUS ON WATER PROGRAMS
Lindsay Johnson, Portage College’s Water Resources Manager, was also on hand at the ceremony to tell the crowd about another new course: Potable and Wastewater Systems Management, a four-day program starting in mid-May. The addition makes Portage only the third institution in Alberta to offer this mandatory course for municipal water management in Alberta, and would be the first step water technicians would take to be certified to work at Lac La Biche’s BNR Wastewater Treatment Plant that is currently under construction.
Keough said the municipal water program is part of Portage’s new focus on water programming. Besides the new courses, the college is also planning a reference testing lab attached to the water treatment plant on Beaverhill Road in Lac La Biche, as well as a water research lab on the shores of Lac La Biche Lake between the Hamlets of Plamondon and Lac La Biche.
“We’re not only surrounded by water, but we know that water is an extremely valuable commodity at present, and that it will become an increasingly valuable commodity in the future,” Keough said. “And what better way to demonstrate good stewardship, than to look at researching it, protecting it, and training individuals who are going to ensure that we’re going to have sufficient quantities and qualities of water into the future.”
