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(Adds comments from CEO, Canada energy minister, details on move, shares and background) Oct 31 (Reuters) – Encana Corp will shift base from Calgary to the United States and become Ovintiv Inc next year, the oil and gas producer said on Thursday, the latest company to move away from Canada as the nation battles with pipeline capacity shortages. Encana’s peers Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and Suncor Energy have either been selling their Canadian assets or have scaled back investments as pipeline space crunch impacts prices. Canada’s western oil patch is already hurting from five years of low crude prices and pipeline constraints, which resulted in capital investment in the sector more than halving to C$37 billion ($28.12 billion) in 2019 from C$81 billion in 2014. “Sadly, I cannot say I am surprised, as Encana has been shifting its efforts to the U.S. for years, in large part due to harmful policies in Canada,” Sonya Savage, Alberta’s energy minister said in a statement. Encana, once among Canada’s largest oil companies, has been shifting its exposure from Canada to the United States and earlier this year bought Texas-based Newfield Exploration Co for $5.5 billion. U.S. operations accounted for 60.5% of Encana’s […]
