A storied history: Born out of fire and explosion, Encana's roots tied to Canadian Pacific Railway's western push in the 1880s

A Canadian Pacific Rail drill site in Medicine Hat, Atla.Canadian Pacific Railways Ltd.

Encana Corporation is a hydrocarbon exploration company. It is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. Likewise, said the company is ranked 1408 in the Forbes Global 2000 and has been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

Before asset sales began in 2013, Encana was the largest producer of natural gas in Canada.

Now, it is necessary to indicate that it was born from fire and explosion and it is that the roots of Encana are linked to the Western impulse of the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1880s.

The company, at that time part of CP Rail, was the first to use natural gas as a heating source in Canada in the 1880s. But the birth of the company that now aims to move its headquarters out of Canada after Calling it home for 135 years, it occurred in the middle of a fire and an explosion and “by chance,” according to the Canadian Pacific website.

Encana to the passage of time

The government of Sir John A. Macdonald granted the CPR drilling rights along the route and discovered the gas in southern Alberta. In this way, Encana moves to the United States and changes its name as Canada becomes a dirty word in the oil patch.

Decades later, CPR formed Canadian Pacific Oil and Gas to manage its mineral rights and properties. A 1971 merger with Central-Del Rio Oils to improve its natural gas production led to a name change: PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. The company was Canada’s largest independent oil and gas producer at the time.

Eleven years later, they moved his corporate headquarters to Calgary and in the 1990s produced 260,000 barrels per day. A slight change of name followed in 2001 PanCanadian Energy Corp. and the exploration expanded abroad with a British discovery. The production almost doubled.

Encana sold some assets, such as two Alberta gas pipelines for $ 1.6 billion and its interest in Syncrude for more than $ 1.4 billion, then expanded with new projects in Alberta, California, Louisiana, and Brazil.

Encana has achieved profitability in recent years, ending 2018 with net earnings of US $ 1,070 million and a production of 361,200 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Source: Colin McClelland | National Post