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1880s to 2002 - Canadian Pacific and PanCanadian years
When the Canadian Pacific Railway was formed, the government of Sir John A. Macdonald compensated it for assuming the risk of developing the railroad with the subsurface rights for a checkerboard pattern of most of Alberta and part of Saskatchewan. These rights were later spun off to the company's predecessors.While drilling for water near Medicine Hat, in 1883 Canadian Pacific Railway staff discovered natural gas.On July 3, 1958, Canadian Pacific created "Canadian Pacific Oil and Gas" to manage its oil and gas properties and its mineral rights which, in 1971 merged with "Central-Del Rio Oils", to create PanCanadian Petroleum Limited.
2002 to 2019 - the Encana years
In April 2002, Pan Canadian Petroleum Ltd was spun out of Canadian Pacific Limited. It subsequently merged with Alberta Energy Corporation to form EnCana. Gwyn Morgan was named president and CEO.In 2009, EnCana completed the corporate spin-off of Cenovus Energy, which held its oil business, representing one-third of its total production and reserves, and EnCana Corporation retaining the natural gas business. Investors favoured the split as it gave them the flexibility to choose between investing in oil, gas, or both.
In December 2012, Encana announced a US$2.1 billion joint venture with state-owned, Beijing-based PetroChina through which PetroChina received a 49.9% stake in Encana's Duvernay Formation acreage in Alberta. This was in line with the rules that "favor minority stakes over takeovers" since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's December 7, 2012 prohibition of purchases by state-owned enterprises seeking to invest in Canadian oil. By the end of 2012, Encana's staff had increased to 4,169 employees.Encana and Cenovus' headquarters, The Bow in Calgary, was completed in 2013, becoming the tallest building in Canada outside of Toronto. The project, owned by H&R REIT, was announced as Encana's headquarters in 2006, prior to the Cenovus split.In November 2013, the company cut its dividend, announced layoffs of 20% of its employees, closure of its office in Plano, Texas, and plans to sell assets and to found a separate company for its mineral rights and royalty interests across southern Alberta. It planned to invest 75% of its 2014 capital budget into 5 projects: Projects in the Montney Formation and the Duvernay Formation in Alberta, the San Juan Basin in New Mexico, Louisiana's Tuscaloosa Marine Shale, and the Denver-Julesburg Basin in northeast Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska.In October 2019, the company announced plans to move its operations from Canada to Denver, where its CEO lived, and change its name to Ovintiv.The name change, notably the dropping of "Cana" was met with criticism in Canada. Encana's departure from Canada "only intensified the gloom enveloping the Canadian energy industry after foreign companies sold more than US$30 billion". Youssef Youssef, a commerce professor at Humber College in Toronto, also takes this perspective, citing the difficulty in changing a brand as recognizable as this one " was a solid brand and it had resonance within the Canadian oil industry, and everybody knows the company, so to change the brand, it takes a lot of steps.”
2020 to present day - Ovintiv
On January 24, 2020, after receiving shareholder approval, the company completed the transfer of its corporate domicile from Canada to the United States, Ovintiv Canada ULC retains an office in Calgary.In June 2020, the company announced layoffs of 25% of its workforce.
