Career Overview
Galen began his career as a mining engineer working for Imperial Oil on the Kearl Oil Sands Project. He spent 15 years with the company, seeing the development of Kearl from project to operation and through subsequent expansion and debottlenecking that more than doubled production. His work with Kearl focused on medium- to long-range mine and tailings planning. He was part of the initial mine equipment procurement team, and he supported numerous sustaining and growth projects and opportunities of varying sizes. Galen also conducted reserves and resources assessment for Kearl. In 2018, he joined a team that reviewed and updated the strategic mine plan for Kearl.
In 2022, Galen and his family decided to move to Australia to seek out new opportunities and experiences. Galen joined Minara Resources at their Murrin Murrin Operations, supervising the mine engineering team across the full planning horizon. He was later promoted to superintendent, supervising the geology and survey teams as well. At Murrin Murrin, Galen continued to work with strategic planning best practices developed at the operation in concert with Whittle Consulting over the previous two decades.
Galen joined Whittle Consulting in May 2025 as a Consultant, based in Perth, Western Australia.
Career Highlights
Galen was part of a team that reviewed and updated the strategic mine plan for Imperial Oil’s Kearl Oil Sands operation. Once the plan was adopted, Galen led the effort to implement the plan at the tactical and execution levels within the Kearl operation. He organised internal training to create understanding and buy-in across the organisation. He was also the technical lead in developing a major regulatory application to gain approval for the new strategic plan.
When Galen was working as a tailings engineer, the recently started Kearl plant was not producing the anticipated tailings streams, challenging the tailings management plan. Galen developed a stochastic model to assess the probability of successful tailings management. This validated the medium-term viability of the tailings management plan and justified the deferral of future capital expenditures.
At Minara Resource’s Murrin Murrin Operations, Galen updated the in-pit tailings management strategy to increase the tailings storage efficiency and reduce the pressure on mining to deliver additional capacity. Galen also reviewed the strategic planning processes at Murrin Murrin. He identified and implemented opportunities to refresh and improve the quality of the strategic plan.
Qualifications
Bachelor of Science (Mining Engineering), Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
Memberships
Member of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM)
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