An infamous former Fort merchant is leading a new company hoping to cash in on carbon dioxide storage.
Steve Claussen, owner of a string of failed home improvement shops and a short-lived magazine, is now President and CEO of Capital Reserve Canada. His company plans to fight climate change by storing carbon dioxide in salt caverns near Two Hills.
Claussen achieved his new $360,000/year position in 2008 by selling an oilfield service company, Behral Canada Inc. that he founded to Capital Reserve Canada chairman, and former Alberta Premier, Don Getty.
Capital Reserve Canada announced its carbon dioxide storage plans last year. The company secured $10 million in financing in September of this year. It has, however, yet to apply for government approval for the project.
Claussen, age 37, has a long history in court and in business. He was convicted of assaulting a police officer here in town in 2006, fined $862 and placed on probation for six months. He was convicted in February, 2005, of entering into a prepaid business contract in 2002 without holding the required licence. He was fined $300.
His unsuccessful home improvement shops included two in Fort Saskatchewan. The Design Centre on 99 Avenue operated just five months in 1997 before Claussen was arrested on 25 charges of fraud and failing to inform customers that he had gone bankrupt the year before.
Although Claussen was indeed bankrupt, the charges were dismissed a year later, though not before it was revealed that he had also been convicted of fraud and perjury in 1992, and again on similar charges in 1996.
Claussen then opened another home improvement store in St. Albert, operating it for about two years before it burned to the ground in June, 2000. At the time, Claussen told the Edmonton Journal that he had stores in Sherwood Park and Calgary, and would be rebuilding in St. Albert.
Instead, Claussen moved back to Fort Saskatchewan, opening Spaces Home Interiors on 100 Avenue in 2002. It lasted less than a year. Claussen operated another pair of stores, M-Design and M-Paint on Sherwood Park’s Baseline road in 2003. These stores failed in less than a year.
Claussen’s publishing venture, M-Magazine, printed just one issue in 2005 before collapsing.