Canada has a privatized oil sector that has witnessed considerable consolidation in recent years. The largest integrated operator in the country is Imperial Oil, majority owned by ExxonMobil. In 2002, Alberta Energy Company and PanCanadian Energy merged to create EnCana, Canada’s largest independent upstream operator.

 

Other significant oil producers in Canada include Talisman Energy, Suncor, EOG Resources, Husky Energy, and Apache Canada. U.S. companies maintain a sizable presence in the Canadian oil industry.

The Canadian government formed Petro-Canada in 1975 in an effort to reduce the dominance of U.S. companies in Canada’s oil industry. The company received considerable initial resources from the Canadian government in its early years, though critics accused Petro-Canada of inefficiently deploying those resources and interfering with the operations of private companies. In 1991, the Canadian government began to privatize Petro-Canada, and in late 2004, the government sold its remaining 20 percent stake in the company.