Career Highlights: Reading the Play, Leading the Change

September 23, 2026

In his youth, Stephen Arseniuk was a minor hockey goalie – a role that demands more than quick reflexes and physical agility. Goalies are the last line of defence, reading the play as it unfolds, staying composed under pressure and taking calculated risks when needed. They are problem-solvers on the ice, using a mix of skill and intuition to deflect shots and anchor the team.

That same mindset defines how Stephen approaches his adult life. He is drawn to complex challenges, whether optimizing the extra-curricular schedules of his three pre-teens, tuning his ’86 Camaro or convincing competing organizations to collaborate. The more complex the problem, the more focused he becomes on identifying a path forward.

After completing his Mechanical Engineering degree at the University of Calgary, Stephen began his career with an internship at Deer Creek Energy in Fort McMurray. Starting in the field on drilling and completions, he quickly showed an ability to read the situation and anticipate what was needed next, taking on responsibility for the drilling program just months later.

Following Total E&P Canada’s acquisition of Deer Creek in 2005, Stephen joined Laricina Energy, a new company focused on in situ oil sands development. Over the next decade, he worked across drilling, infrastructure, commercial and operations roles. The work was complex and often uncertain – conditions well suited to someone willing to step out of the crease, assess the situation and take responsibility for the next play. After earning his MBA in 2015, he expanded into broader business decisions, contributing to valuation, liabilities and negotiations as the company evolved.

Stephen joined COSIA as a Senior Technical Advisor in 2018 and helped establish a governance structure that enabled competing oil sands companies to work together on shared challenges through the launch of the Innovation+ Joint Venture.

“I saw ‘co-opetition’ as the solution,” Stephen explains. “Companies could compete on strategy, execution and operations, but cooperate on technologies that help improve environmental performance – like helping derisk and deploy solvents or improve extraction and production technologies.”

At COSIA, Stephen went on to serve as Acting Director, GHG and then Director of Innovation+ and New Opportunities. In these roles, he helped launch the innovator scale-up program to identify and advance technologies with the potential to solve industry-wide challenges.

In 2022, when COSIA became the innovation arm of Pathways Alliance (now Oil Sands Alliance), Stephen supported the organization in navigating the best path to deploying projects that would meet members’ emissions intensity reduction goals. In early 2025, he took on leadership of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Environmental Priority Area and integrated the technology development and deployment aspects of emissions intensity reduction. This work contributed to industry’s phased approach to carbon capture and storage, grounded in the view that progress would require not just innovation, but deployment at scale.

Today, as Director, Emissions Strategy, GHG and Land Environmental Priority Areas, Stephen leads this work in close collaboration with Innovation and COSIA VP Wes Jickling. His role requires balancing policy, technology and industry alignment – reading the play across a broader arena, where the stakes are high and the path forward is rarely straightforward.

“I’m drawn to the unknown, where uncertainty might keep others away,” Stephen reflects, “I like to chart a course that others can follow and perfect. This was true in the subsurface part of my career (drilling and exploiting a difficult reservoir that had never been commercialized), then solving the range of business challenges I had at Laricina, and now at COSIA through my varied roles where the common thread is ‘other duties as required’.”

Stephen’s drive is another thread that runs throughout his career. From solving engineering challenges at the operational level to aligning solutions across an entire industry, he has consistently stepped beyond his comfort zone to take on problems others have not yet solved.

Even years after leaving the ice, the mindset Stephen developed as a goalie continues to shape his leadership – steady under pressure, focused on solving complex problems, and prepared to make decisions when the stakes are high. In a role that demands navigating some of the industry’s toughest technical challenges, he brings clarity, collaboration and action to issues that matter across the sector.