Randall L. Jespersen was appointed President of Terasen Gas in 2002, having previously held the 
positions of Senior Vice-President, Energy Delivery Services and Senior Vice-President, Gas Supply. He is past chair of the Western Energy Institute and is a board member of the Canadian Gas Association.
That’s the official entry in the online guidebook of B.C. business leaders. It lauds the polished final essence of the man’s achievements, sums up his career in a slick paragraph, knocking the dust of southern Alberta grain fields from his boots and wiping the Texas gulf coast sweat from his brow.
But it’s not how Randy Jespersen, dryland farm boy, high school drop-out and Lethbridge College Distinguished Alumnus, who earned an MBA at 21, features himself when he sits down to recount his achievements. In its brevity, it omits salient facts that shaped a young man who, despite heading Canada’s third-largest distributor of natural gas, still finds time to assist a brother with harvesting near Taber every August.
It doesn’t tell how a guy, who played a key role in stickhandling the sale of a gas giant through a stringent regulatory process while earning the highest premium of its kind for shareholders, has a computer screensaver showing him on a grain combine with his four-year-old granddaughter in his lap, or how he gives credit to his parents and others for mentoring him as a youngster.
It fails to recount that the same fellow who negotiated with Ottawa to gain approvals for major Canadian energy projects – from the Beaufort Sea to Alberta’s oilsands – once lived in a campground while completing his masters at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) before moving to more elegant accommodations in a clapped-out, west-end basement suite in Saskatoon just in time to avoid the frigid prairie winter.
“I had no idea it would come to this,” says the president of Terasen Gas, while visiting Lethbridge College where the farm boy started his metamorphosis into Canadian energy guru.
“I envisioned myself farming in the summers and teaching at the college in the winters.” Nice plan, until Randy realized as the youngest of four sons his place in the family farm structure was far from conducive to the personal success he sought. He had left Taber’s W.R. Myers High School following Grade 11, far from setting any scholastic records. He also left with a wife, married, at 16, to Cheryl Bowman, his junior high school sweetheart and biggest supporter. The two have been together 37 years.
“I was not an academic achiever,” says Randy. “But I’ve been very lucky to have people who pushed me to succeed.” Among those who pushed was Tom Miller, a high school book keeping and economics teacher and Randy’s teacher cousin Laurie Chomany, a co-worker of Tom’s who refused to watch the young student walk away from education. Tom helped secure Randy a spot in the Business Administration program at Lethbridge College through his home town friend, Jim MacNeal, from Cape Breton, N.S., who was then the director of student services at Lethbridge College. “I made a deal with them,” says Randy. “I agreed to take Grade 12 courses if they’d let me take college-level businesses courses at the same time. They agreed, so I loaded up on course work and completed a two-year diploma in three semesters.” Bill Johnson, then the College’s student counselor, and MacNeal became Randy’s mentors, arranging student loans, steering him through the program.
To help pay his way, Randy pumped gas at two city gas stations and helped operate Time Air’s “VW Microbus limo.” He and Cheryl were also caretakers of a six-plexwhile carrying 34 semester hours on his way to a Lethbridge College diploma.
Next came university. The University of Calgary wouldn’t accept someone without a high school diploma; the University of Alberta was willing to give him credit for a semester’s work at Lethbridge College. Instead, Randy headed to Oregon State, which accepted all his college credits. With Jim MacNeal and Bill Johnson calling every semester to ensure he was all right and continuing to arrange student loans for him, Randy completed the additional six quarters in five.
Now the father of two and the proud owner of major student loans, Randy set off for graduate school at the U of S, spending several weeks of the fall semester in the Blackstrap Campground, unable, at first, to find accommodations in Saskatoon. As an alien, he had been unable to work in Oregon and debts had mounted. But he persevered. Finally, armed with an MBA and an intrigue for small business, he set forth to make his mark, but the door-knocking produced little to whet his interest. While helping out with spring work on the family farm, he traipsed Calgary streets and there, in the west end, late one Friday afternoon, he hit paydirt.
Dome Petroleum had a dream of developing Canada’s far-flung oil reserves and Randy bought in. He served three years in Dome’s Calgary office, tutored by some of the biggest names in the nation’s petroleum industry, people like “Smiling” Jack Gallagher.
“That’s really where I did my MBA,” says Randy. “Dome was run by folks who thrived on independence and hated bureaucracy. The people at the top had 400 employees and knew everyone by their first name and a little of what they did for the firm.”
After three years, he was sent to Houston to head Dome’s bulk products operation. At 25, his biggest handicap was his age, perceived as too young to handle the work. “I held my breath waiting for someone to say ‘he can’t do it’ and of course I’d crawl over broken glass to show I could.”
He returned to Calgary to work on Dome’s major projects, negotiating government approvals (for which he was considered a right-wing lackey) and assuaging environmental groups (a left-wing pinko).
“It was the job where everyone loved to hate the guy in the position,” recalls Randy.
But time and tide was not on Dome’s side. It was sold to Amoco Canada in 1998. Randy continued to work for the new owners for the next eight years, before being headhunted for the position of senior vice-president with Terasen, and then known as B.C. Gas Utility, the largest gas distributor in the Pacific Northwest, roughly the same size as Atco Gas.
In 2005, Terasen was sold, amid much public concern, to Kinder Morgan of Houston, a major player in the American gas transportation and storage industry. The sale was completed quickly, making shareholders smile. The firm has since been sold again, to Fortis Inc. of St. John’s, NL, making it the largest investor-owned energy distributor in Canada, with interests in five provinces and the Caribbean, two million customers and $10 billion in assets.
Randy Jespersen can be said to have reached the apex of his industry. He is astride a vibrant and powerful energy company, enjoys financial security and a host of attractive perks. But through all of the success, he has never forgotten Lethbridge College.
“Lethbridge College was part of my formative years,” he says. “It afforded me the opportunity to walk out with a diploma and options to continue my academic career. It was the personal touch, the teach-by-teaching philosophy that helped me succeed.
To future college students, Randy provides two insights: “Know why you’re here and, perhaps more importantly, know why you’re not. You’re not here for your parents or your friends; you’re here for yourself. I’m a huge believer in finding a direction that feels right. Trim the sails, tack into the wind from time to time, but figure out where north is.
“Once you have your diploma, realize it improves your chances but guarantees nothing. The rest depends on your ethics, attitude and drive.”
Randy says he believes in – and encourages – giving back to others.
“I think it’s a duty,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be financial, either; it can be spending time in a classroom as a guest lecturer or teaching in retirement.”
Lethbridge College is the only post-secondary institution at which Randy has established a scholarship, one he says should be awarded not for academic achievement, but to someone who needs the money to succeed.
Terasen paints its projects green
At Terasen Gas, environmental and social responsibility is a facet built into every project the firm undertakes, says David Bodnar, director of Community, Aboriginal and Government relations.
“Here, it’s about continuous improvement,” says David, a 20-year veteran of the Burnaby, B.C., company. Terasen operates in some of the most environmentally sensitive and rugged terrain anywhere in Canada, in a province whose residents have, perhaps, the lowest tolerance for ecological trespass.
“When we marry those two factors and add in today’s concerns about climate change and global warming, we become acutely aware of the challenges we face,” says David.
If green is far from the colour of the month at Terasen, so, too, is “sustainability” a long way from a simple buzzword, says David.
“You hear a lot about sustainability these days, but it defines how we make decisions. If a project makes financial and economic sense, is environmentally responsible and mirrors social values, then it has a good chance of proceeding.”
Terasen met its Kyoto responsibilities in 1999, not, says David, because t had to, but because the company determined it was the right thing to do.
“We’ve been a leader in this area, even as we’ve been quietly going about our business.” The same philosophy overns Terasen’s relationships with aboriginal communities. B.C. has more unsettled land claims than the rest of Canada together, but the firm has managed to navigate through the potential minefield, gaining friends along the way.
Terasen wins over native leadership in three ways: it exceeds aboriginal employment targets established elsewhere, it involves communities in quity sharing, and it gets them thinking about involvement in projects that will produce long-term advantages, all the while respecting their historical protocols and values.
As it builds a pipeline to Whistler, for instance, Terasen must relocate a key propane distribution system. It may come to pass that system is placed on aboriginal land, creating an economic opportunity for that community for years.
Terasen has also provided seed capital to the Chinook Aboriginal Business Education venture at the University of British Columbia, a venture designed to encourage aboriginal students to study economics and commerce.
“We hope that in educating aboriginal students, they can give back to their communities,” says David.
