Oil patch trailblazer Suzanne West dead at 52

Mar 7, 2018

Share

Imaginea IO CEO Suzanne West has died of brain cancer at 52.

“It is with sadness and disbelief that we say goodbye to you, our dear friend Suzanne West. Your fight with cancer was brief, but courageous,” the company said in a statement.

“You were a force, a brilliant business mind that was charged with a purpose to do things differently, to pioneer and drive forward new approaches to problems that had existed for too long.”

West, one of the few female CEOs in Alberta’s oil and gas industry, was very vocal about finding a way to create clean hydrocarbons and sustainability in the oil patch.

In November, West split Imaginea IO (founded as Imaginea Energy Corp. in 2013) from U.S.-based Lime Rock Partners and all the company’s oil and gas production-related assets.

“Earlier in the year we came to the conclusion both together that we were not aligned on the same page. They just want to be a traditional company focused on profits and I clearly don’t,” West told The Canadian Press at the time.

“I want to change the fortunes of our industry and how we participate on the planet side and on the people side.”

- With files from BNN’s Tara Weber and The Canadian Press