Montney development. Image: Encana My belief in the importance of Canadian-headquartered companies goes back to the early 1970s when, as a young engineer, I joined the Canadian subsidiary of a Nebraska-based oil and gas company. While I was treated well and given substantial responsibility, I yearned to work for a company where the decisions were made in Calgary, not Omaha. That opportunity came with a new startup called the Alberta Energy Co. I joined AEC to head the building of the oil and gas division. The company grew quickly. But five years later, the entire oil and gas industry was struck a huge blow by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau ’ s National Energy Program. It capped oil prices below world levels and slapped a confiscatory tax on the gross revenues of energy companies. Canadian-headquartered companies were supposed to benefit from cash grants, provided we shifted our drilling to federally-owned lands. But most of those lands were in the Arctic, where drilling costs were prohibitive and access to pipelines was non-existent. After the next federal government, the Brian Mulroney-led Conservatives, killed the Trudeau policies in 1985, AEC got back to the job of company building. Not long after I became […]
