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Although there are numerous oil companies operating in Canada, the majority of production, refining and marketing is done by fewer than 20 of them. According to the 2013 edition of Forbes Global 2000, canoils.com and any other list that emphasizes market capitalization and revenue when sizing up companies, as of March 31, 2014 these are the largest Canada-based oil and gas companies (they are either based entirely in Canada or majority Canadian owned). However more recent changes, possibly mergers or a stronger showing in the price of oil could mean a few of the oil sands producers are underrepresented; this is because Canadian companies are increasingly dependent on production from that source, which is hurt severely when oil prices decline below 50 to 60 dollars a barrel since costs per barrel traditionally exceed $28 and non-upgraded bitumen (<10o API) produces 1.7 fewer barrels per metric ton than West Texas Intermediate oil (according to calculation). A few of the larger companies (Penn West Petroleum and Athabasca Oil Corporation) don't show up in the Forbes list because its ranking system takes many different factors into account. Syncrude and Irving Oil are also leaders in the Canadian industry, with Syncrude being the top producer of oil sands crude and Irving Oil operating the largest oil refinery in the country. Also, based on the price paid for a 9% share in Syncrude Canada Ltd by Sinopec the company could be worth as much as US$50 billion. Canadian oil company profits quickly recovered from the financial crisis; In 2009 they were down 90% but in 2010 they reached $8.4 billion; Helping profits is the smaller price gap between West Texas Intermediate oil ($85/bbl) and Western Canadian heavy crude ($65/bbl) with the price of upgraded synthetic oil surpassing WTI when supply falls (before being upgraded to synthetic crude, heavier oil produces fewer barrels of oil per metric ton than lighter oil). The two largest (Suncor and CNRL) are 2 of the 11 most valuable Canadian companies (April 2013). Pacific Rubiales Energy is Canada's largest oil company not based in Calgary, Alberta (2,412 oil and gas companies are based in Calgary).
Contents
- Market capitalization March 31 2014 revenue 2013 profit 2013 production reserves
- Suncor Energy
- Canadian Natural Resources Limited
- EnCana Corporation
- Husky Energy
- Enbridge
- Cenovus Energy
- Talisman Energy
- Nexen
- Syncrude
- Irving Oil
- Addax petroleum
- Other large oil and gas companies
- Forbes ranking of Canadian companies
- Key people
- References
Ongoing research and development involving extraction technology and processing methods have slowly chipped away at many of the barriers to bitumen production. Many Canadian oil companies have a lot of exposure to heavy oil through assets in Alberta and so they will benefit when research into more efficient and cost effective solutions yields positive results (Petrobank has numerous patents related to extraction technology that at least one major engineering firm considers 17% more efficient than the widely used steam assisted gravity drainage). In the summer of 2010 a research team at Hokkaido University revealed that they had discovered a catalyst that significantly improves the efficiency while lowering costs related to the processing of bitumen. Also among major Canadian producers, interest in new energy technologies is rising, a direct result of both heightened interest in raising the proportion of the oil sands that can be recovered (10%, which means 1.6 trillion barrels (250 km3) are at stake) and the growing value of licensing rights. That has resulted in a shift in focus over to patent producing research and development. Cenovus Energy has used its patents as a tool to negotiate deals.
Profiled and ranked is every Canadian oil and gas company with a market cap ranking top 500 worldwide and the eight largest by revenue (Nexen made Forbes list but not the top 500 companies according to market capitalization but it had the highest revenue among all other petroleum companies according to this list, addax petroleum became part of Sinopec). Eight of the ten most profitable companies of the oil and gas sector operating in Canada are represented here (other two were Athabasca Oil Sands Corp and Heritage Oil). In 2011 Canadian Natural Resources overtook Suncor to become Canada's largest producer. Suncor produced 549,000 boe/d in 2012 only slightly higher than in 2011. Canadian Natural Resources produced at a gross rate of 655,000 boe/d up from 600,000 boe/d the year before.
Market capitalization (March 31, 2014), revenue (2013), profit (2013), production, reserves
source for market cap, source for profit. [1] Data rounded to nearest million.
Suncor Energy
Revenue 36.82 bn MV 59.927 bn (2011)
Canadian Natural Resources Limited
Revenue 14.625 bn, MV 48.379 bn (2011)
EnCana Corporation
Revenue 9.097 bn MV 21.419 bn (2011)
EnCana, North America's largest natural gas producer was formed in 2002 when PanCanadian Energy merged with Alberta Energy Company. It operates in Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, Colorado, Wyoming, Texas and Louisiana and had the largest reserve base among Canadian producers as recently as 2007. At the end of 2009 Encana created Cenovus Energy when it split its integrated oil and natural gas components. In February 2012 Encana sold 40% of its 100% interest in the Cutbank Ridge Complex, a natural gas resource in NE British Columbia. The deal is worth $2.9 billion, in 2011 the company made $3.5 billion in deals. The deal came just after another one involving Petro China collapsed.
Husky Energy
Revenue 18.261 bn MV 23.648 bn (2011)
Husky Energy was founded in Wyoming by Albertan Glenn Nielson who with 2 partners, bought 2 heavy oil refineries, and used them to establish the Husky Refining Co. in 1938. This was followed by major purchases of oil rich land and gas stations. In 1946 Nielson moved part of the company to Canada where Husky Oil Ltd. was created separate from the parent company. By the late 1970s the company's need for more funding eventually forced Nielson to sell all his stake in the company. Another Albertan, Bob Blair CEO of the pipeline company AGTL (later renamed Nova Corp.) took advantage of the situation gradually increasing his stake in the company until he owned a controlling interest. About a decade later Husky ran into financial problems that were solved when Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing started investing in the company leading to a buy out of Blair's interests in 1991. The 1988 acquisition of Centerra Energy Ltd. made Husky a top 10 Canadian oil company. After a turbulent couple decades, Husky reasserted itself as a major Canadian petroleum company in 2000 by purchasing Renaissance Energy Ltd. in a $3.02 billion deal.
Husky Energy has proven petroleum reserves of 430,000,000 barrels (68,000,000 m3) and 2 trillion cubic feet (5.7×1010 m3) of natural gas. It owns approximately 500 filling stations in Canada as well as property and/or mineral rights to some 6.67 million acres (27,000 km²) in Western Canada.
Husky's oil production was exactly the same in 2011 as it was in 2003 (312,500 boe/d).
Enbridge
Revenue 15.539 bn MV 21.664 bn (2011)
Began as a pipeline company called interprovincial pipelines incorporated by Imperial Oil in the 1940s as a result of growth at the Leduc oil fields in Alberta exceeding the capacity of Alberta's refineries to process the oil. In 1950 its pipelines were operational and in 1953 it was a publicly traded company at stock exchanges in Toronto and Montreal. By the late 1950s its main pipeline was almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) long handling about 200,000 barrels (32,000 m3) of oil per day in certain sections. In the late 1960s refineries in the US and Canada demanded more oil be delivered from Canadian sources, and the solution deemed best by management, and government officials was to build a new line through Chicago. The access expansion gave the company to Chicago helped the company grow rapidly and by the early 1970s throughput reached 900,000 barrels (140,000 m3) of oil. By 1986 Imperial Oil's ownership of the company was down to 33% and through an exchange of shares Imperial Oil helped interprovincial acquire another oil company called Hiram Walker while subsequently changing its name to Interhome Energy Inc. Later it was renamed IPL Energy Inc. During the 1990s it acquired a number of other companies (consumers gas, altagas, interest in Chicap pipeline) which delivered natural gas as well but most of the company's business was still in crude oil. The new divisions gave the company greater access to Toronto, Quebec and New York. Its last name change made in 1998 was to Enbridge Inc. a combination of the words energy and bridge.
Currently Enbridge owns the world's longest oil pipeline system (delivers 2,000,000 barrels (320,000 m3) per day), owns Canada's largest natural gas distributing company, and has 1.9 million customers. It is also active in the alternative energy sector, having an interest in wind farms, waste heat recovery plants and photovoltaic projects the largest of which is the Sarnia Solar Project.
Revenue comes from commodity sales (79%), gas distribution sales (6.9%), transportation and other services (14.0%).
Cenovus Energy
Revenue 13.621 bn MV 25.049 bn (2011) Cenovus Energy Inc. is the former component of Encana that focused more on integrated oil than natural gas though natural gas continues to contribute about half of total production (exceeded oil (crude and synthetic combined) as recently as the end of 2009 however a steady fall in output combined with new oil sands production has reduced that).
Cenovus Energy owns a 50% interest in two major US refineries managed by ConocoPhillips. Because of a glut of oil supply in parts of the US, these assets are of particular value to the company.
Talisman Energy
In 2011 and 2012 Talisman sold off some of its largest assets including 50% of British operations; that resulted in revenue loss ($8.347b in 2011 to $7.312b in 2012).
Originally BP Canada, Talisman Energy is a publicly traded Tsx 60 petroleum company that operates in Canada, USA, Columbia, Scotland, Peru, Algeria, Tunisia, UK, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, and Qatar.
Nexen
Revenue 5.840 bn MV 11.986 bn (2011)
In February 2013 Nexen was taken over by Cnooc in a $15.1 billion deal. At the time, Nexen's 2.5 billion boe reserves would've ranked 8th among Canada's oil companies.
When Nexen was created in 1971 it was a subsidiary of the American company Occidental Petroleum called Canadian Occidental Petroleum. After taking over a number of smaller companies in Canada while increasing their international holdings they became larger and more independent of their parent company that by then held only a minor stake. In 2001 the name was changed to nexen in recognition of that. In 2012 the company profited $333 million on revenues of $6.7 billion which is down since 2008 (US $8–9 billion, market value of US $11.14 billion, and a profit of US $1.68 billion). On November 29, 2011 Nexen sold 40% of its Horn River, Cordova and Liard basins shale-gas assets in northeast B.C. to Inpex Corp and JGC Corp of Japanese for US$676 million. At the Long Lake project oil is upgraded by a process known as steam assisted gravity drainage.
Operates in Canada, Yemen, Colombia, West Africa and the UK (offshore).
In February 2011 the Usan offshore oil field began producing. It has a capacity of 180,000 barrels per day and Nexen holds a 20% interest in it.
Syncrude
Irving Oil
Addax petroleum
Addax Petroleum (Sinopec) was one of about 60 Canadian companies that made it onto the Forbes Global 2000 2009 list. It was acquired by sinopec of China in June 2009 for C$8.27 billion.
Other large oil and gas companies
These companies have at least 2 billion dollars in market value (6 of them being near or over $10 billion, the rest are between four and seven billion with the exception of Petrobank, Sherritt and Laricina Energy). In order of size
Forbes ranking of Canadian companies
113 oil and gas companies made the list in 2015 (down from 121 in 2014 / 98 in 2013 / 131 in 2012 / 126 in 2011 / 115 in 2010) 10 of which are Canadian (down from 12 in 2014 / 9 in 2013 / 13 in 2012 / 14 in 2011 / 8 in 2010).
In 2014 Enbridge and TransCanada re-entered the list after a one-year absence; Pembina Pipeline is also a new addition. Dropping out of the list was Canadian Oil Sands Ltd, Pacific Rubiales Energy in 2015, Penn West Petroleum in 2013, Arc Resources in 2012.
Revenue and profit are from the 12-month period ended March 2015, assets and market capitalization are from March (2014 for Canadian Oil Sands Ltd, Pacific Rubiales Energy)
Sources Oil Services 2015 Oil Operations 2015 Oil Services 2014 and Oil Operations 2014
Key people
James Miller Williams, John T Ferguson, Richard L. George, Randy Eresman, David P.O'Brien, John C.S. Lau, Li Ka-shing, David D. Daniel, John Manzoni, Philip D. Dolan, Marvin Romanow,