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CALGARY • It’s been almost a decade since scores of highly skilled Venezuelan oil workers like Petro Pereira, fired and blackballed by dictator Hugo Chavez for protesting his tightening grip on the national oil company, made their way north to Alberta.

Today, word that an aggressive cancer may soon put an end to his dictatorship and potentially reactivate Venezuela’s once-mighty oil industry has many reassessing the future.

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Mr. Pereira, a world expert on heavy oil who is now a scholar at the University of Calgary, is so engrossed in research to improve oil sands upgrading he plans to stay put.

But the state of Mr. Chavez’s health is a hot topic in the colony of expats, and many are talking about returning if there is regime change in the South American country, he said.[np-related]

“Honestly, people were very reluctant to come [to Alberta], and finally came because they were starving,” said Mr. Pereira, a UC Berkeley, Calif.-trained scientist who was responsible for technology strategy at Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) when he learned in the newspapers he had been let go.