Harvey Behn is the General Manager of Eh-Cho Dene Enterprises in Fort Nelson, B.C., a company and a community at the centre of a huge oil and gas region in full industrial bloom. It doesn’t get any more industrially active in oil and gas than it is right now in the surroundings of Fort Nelson, says Harvey.
It is his ancestral home as much as his current home, whereas Harvey is educated in oil and gas development with a Petroleum Engineering degree from University of Wyoming. “We are riding a tsunami of new development in the oil and gas industry around us, and we are surrounded by industry, government, and then there’s us, little Indians on the bottom trying to get up on the wave and ride it to survive.”
He stares at the spending program underway by oil and gas exploration companies (the number of which are too many to count, much less name) and he reflects upon the impact to the environment, the lifestyle of people in the area, and the ways to make opportunities a reality for his community.
As general manager of Eh-Cho Dene Enterprises construction company he employs up to 120 people during major construction projects. The company history dates back to the early 1980s, and in the past 20 years the Fort Nelson Dene people have established a lot of thriving businesses that operate in the town and region; many residents of the 500-person reserve either work for Dene-owned businesses or own one themselves. (Another 300 members buy or rent homes in Fort Nelson or area.)
The current pace of business activity is a little daunting even to a professional oil man with a long career like Harvey. “Just one oil company, for example, has a $1.2 billion exploration budget to outlay in drilling and all the obligations.” Harvey’s goal is to put Eh-Cho Dene trucks and equipment into a few of these expansive operations. Fort Nelson is their epicentre of activity, a place where Harvey was born and raised. He also sits on a six-member council, while the Eh-Cho Dene company is a limited owned by the Band, and run by a six-member board of directors.
Illustrative of how busy the activity is in Fort Nelson, says Harvey, “This year there was no spring break or slow-down in exploration activity. It was non-stop this year and we expect it to be running flat-out again this coming 2011.” This is good news for the 85 percent First Nation employees under his management. It makes for a thriving reserve adjacent Fort Nelson.