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“Unfortunately, two employees were injured in the following explosion and fire,” CP said on its website. “Another well was drilled the following year, and the natural gas from this well was used to heat the station and an adjacent bunkhouse. This was the first recorded use of natural gas as a heating source in Canada.”

Decades later CPR formed Canadian Pacific Oil and Gas to manage its properties and mineral rights. A 1971 merger with Central-Del Rio Oils to improve its natural gas output led to a name change: PanCanadian Petroleum Ltd. The company was Canada’s largest independent oil and gas producer at the time.

Unfortunately, two employees were injured in the following explosion and fire

Eleven years later it moved its corporate headquarters to Calgary and by the 1990s was producing 260,000 barrels a day. A slight name change followed in 2001 to PanCanadian Energy Corp. and the exploration expanded abroad with a British discovery. Output nearly doubled.

Come 2002 and PanCanadian Energy was spun out of CPR and merged with Alberta Energy Corp. to form Encana. The Alberta Energy Co. was formed in 1973 as a 50:50 government and private ownership before the government shares were sold in 1993. As the decade progressed it expanded with acquisitions taking it to Ecuador and Wyoming.

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Encana sold some assets, such as two Alberta pipelines for $1.6 billion and its interest in Syncrude for more than $1.4 billion, then expanded with new projects in Alberta, California, Louisiana and Brazil.

To help streamline operations, in 2009 Encana split into two companies with its oil business forming Cenovus Energy while Encana continued in gas exploration and production.