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A profile of Windsor entrepreneur Peter Bilodeau, whose job as new president of London-based Onco Petroleum is to restore value to the millions of worthless shares held by the embattled company's investors.
One man, one mission

Chip Martin Sun Media

December 24, 2008

As a successful banker and entrepreneur, Peter Bilodeau has seen plenty of challenges in his career.

Chip Martin

"I know how to dissect and put together companies again," he says at a desk in his downtown Windsor office.

The owner of Speedy Money Network, a financial consultant and holder of a Fastsigns franchise, Bilodeau, 49, faces a daunting task that will involve no shortage of dissecting and rebuilding.

He has taken on the job of president of embattled Onco Petroleum Inc., a junior oil and natural gas development firm based in London that sought to use new technology to revisit deposits of both resources across Southwestern Ontario and Michigan.

Despite selling 163 million shares to investors in Quebec, Ontario, California and elsewhere, the company is in crisis because of how it was run. Its shares have no value because they can't be traded.

Bilodeau is trying to clean up the mess and get the company listed again on the CNQ with the goal of rebuilding shareholder values for investors such as himself. He holds about a million shares and sold many others to friends, family and business associates in Windsor.

Bilodeau moved the head office of Onco to Windsor and pumped about $200,000 into it to get it back into operation.

He says Job 1 is to unravel corporate finances by hiring auditors to track down about $20 million raised from a stock offering in California. That money was intended to finance exploratory drilling of promising natural gas deposits in the Tilbury gas field in Chatham-Kent.

Bilodeau said a kitty of about $15 million from earlier share sales has apparently been exhausted paying for surveying, seismic, geophysical, drilling and other works.

Onco must produce financial reports to the CNQ by Feb. 4 or its temporary suspension becomes permanent and it will be delisted.

"The auditors are working on completing the audits that are required," Bilodeau says, adding he's confident the deadline will be met and trading in Onco shares can resume.

"There is a lot of work ahead," he concedes. "We're trying to get the Onco ship righted and we will do everything in our power to get the information out to the shareholders."

Asked why he'd tackle the job of head honcho of the troubled firm, Bilodeau says it's simple.

"I believe in the project. It's a great project. My management skills were required to help with the administration and to help get things back on track, so it was the right thing to do."

Aside from restoring value to shareholders, he says he wants to demonstrate Onco's dream is right and he wants the company to become a viable and proven entity.

He says Onco well No. 32 in Chatham-Kent looks promising, as does a nearby area under Lake Erie.

"Our lake leases are considered the jewel of the property," but must be tapped by costly horizontal drilling from shore, he says.

On land, an average exploratory well can cost $200,000 to $300,000. It's many times more costly to drill horizontally.

Bilodeau says Onco has 15 exploratory wells, of which about half will be capped, but the others can be tapped for production.

Overall, he says, reports prepared for Onco indicate more than a trillion cubic feet of gas reserves lie in the Tilbury field in Chatham-Kent. Long term, if major oil and gas companies learn Onco was right, they'll snap it up, benefiting shareholders, he says.

Onco founder Robert Vanier, whom Bilodeau met in 2003 through business, retains a majority of shares, but has agreed to stay out of the picture while Bilodeau tries to set things right.

"Robert is a very charming man," says Bilodeau, adding he retains "a good business relationship" with Vanier.

But he understands some shareholders were unhappy at how Vanier ran the firm. Bilodeau himself admits to some frustration at how things developed.

Vanier did not return calls yesterday.

Bilodeau is unknown to most Onco shareholders. But in Windsor he has strong believers in his financial acumen.

They think he might turn Onco around.

"I trust him, he's an incredible person," says Liz Urquhart, whom Bilodeau advised, along with her late husband, Bob, in their Hawk Plastics injection moulding company.

Urquhart says she and her husband bought a "sizable" number of Onco shares from Bilodeau, whom she's known for 25 years.

She says Bilodeau has a track record of doing what he says he'll do.

"That's why I have no doubt, I have no worries with what we have invested," Urquhart says. "It's taken a lot longer than we would have liked, but I have no doubt Peter will pull through on this."

Bilodeau's corporate lawyer, Paul Layfield, also vouches for him.

"When he says something, he does do that, or works toward getting that done," Layfield says.

Bilodeau, he says, "has the capacity for creative financing (and) an ability to make deals happen."

"He has his job cut out for him and I think he has the capability of doing it," Layfield says.

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KEY EVENTS

Founded in 2002 by Londoner Robert Vanier, Onco Petroleum's vision was to revisit oil and gas fields in Southwestern Ontario, mainly in the Tilbury Field in Chatham-Kent.

Failing to get listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, Onco was listed on the CNQ junior exchange, trading at first at $5 a share.

In its prospectus, Onco advised that shareholders Vanier and his wife, Terri Ramage, held 62 per cent of Onco's 163 million shares.

After failing to file an 2007 annual report as required, Onco directors were barred from trading shares.

Farmers and contractors complained about late or missing payments from Onco.

It was learned MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas obtained a judgment of $440,000 against Vanier.

A Los Angeles firm with whom Vanier was negotiating office space sued him and Onco for $27 million.

In July 2008, no annual report yet filed, trading in company shares was suspended. Shares had dipped to 15 cents.

Onco directors, including former NHL star Luc Robitaille, quit the board.

By September 2008, a Quebec couple who remained on the board accused Vanier and Ramage of taking $17 million from Onco coffers without authorization.

In late September 2008, Vanier and Ramage stepped aside and Peter Bilodeau and four others became the new board. Bilodeau became president.

In November, 2008, the L.A. firm dropped the part of its lawsuit that named Onco. Bilodeau said the move was at his request.

Chip Martin is a Free Press politics reporter.

E-MAIL: Chip Martin

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