Cenovus Energy Inc. (pronounced se-nō-vus) is an integrated oil and natural gas company headquartered in Calgary,

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Terri ...

. Cenovus was formed in 2009 when Encana Corporation split into two distinct companies, with Cenovus becoming focused on oil sands assets. In 2017, Cenovus purchased ConocoPhillips' 50 percent share of their Foster Creek Christina Lake (FCCL) oil sands projects and most of their conventional assets in Alberta and British Columbia, including the Deep Basin. Cenovus completed the acquisition of

Husky Energy Husky Energy Inc. is a company engaged in hydrocarbon exploration, headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It operates in Western and Atlantic Canada, the United States and the Asia Pacific region, with upstream and downstream business seg ...

for C$3.9 billion in

stock In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...

in January 2021. The combined company is Canada’s third-largest crude oil and natural gas producer and the second-largest Canadian-based refiner and upgrader. Cenovus is headquartered in Calgary's Brookfield Place, having completed a move from the neighbouring Bow in 2019.

Operations

Oil sands

Cenovus has four producing projects in the oil sands – Foster Creek, Christina Lake (Alberta), Sunrise (jointly owned with BP Canada and operated by Cenovus) and Tucker. All projects use a drilling method called

steam-assisted gravity drainage Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD; "Sag-D") is an enhanced oil recovery technology for producing heavy crude oil and bitumen. It is an advanced form of steam stimulation in which a pair of horizontal wells is drilled into the oil reservoir, ...

(SAGD). On May 17, 2017, Foster Creek and Christina Lake became 100 percent owned and operated by Cenovus. In December 2021, Cenovus announced the sale of the Tucker oil sands project to Strathcona Resources. In June 2022, Cenovus announced it would acquire the outstanding 50% interest in the Sunrise oil sands asset and assume full ownership.

Conventional oil and gas

Cenovus once held conventional oil and natural gas operations across Alberta and Saskatchewan, including the

Weyburn Weyburn is the eleventh-largest city in Saskatchewan, Canada. The city has a population of 10,870. It is on the Souris River southeast of the provincial capital of Regina and is north from the North Dakota border in the United States. The ...

oilfield in

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a province in western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dak ...

, which is the largest

enhanced oil recovery Enhanced oil recovery (abbreviated EOR), also called tertiary recovery, is the extraction of crude oil from an oil field that cannot be extracted otherwise. EOR can extract 30% to 60% or more of a reservoir's oil, compared to 20% to 40% using p ...

operation in Canada. It's also the site of the largest geological greenhouse gas storage project in the world, with about 30 million tonnes of safely stored underground and extensively studied by researchers as part of the

International Energy Agency The International Energy Agency (IEA) is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organisation, established in 1974, that provides policy recommendations, analysis and data on the entire global energy sector, with a recent focus on curbing carb ...

Greenhouse Gas Weyburn-Midale Monitoring and Storage Project.Weyburn-Midale
published by Petroleum Technology Research Centre In May 2017, Cenovus assumed ownership of ConocoPhillips' conventional assets in Alberta and British Columbia. Cenovus’s current conventional assets include the Deep Basin, a liquids-rich natural gas fairway located in northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, and the Marten Hills heavy oil project. The Deep Basin asset comprises approximately 2.8 million net acres of land and produced more than 97,000

barrels of oil equivalent The barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of energy based on the approximate energy released by burning one barrel (, or ) of crude oil. The BOE is used by oil and gas companies in their financial statements as a way of combining oil and natur ...

a day in 2019. Cenovus also holds a significant land position in the Marten Hills region for potential development. In November 2020, Cenovus announced the sale of the Marten Hills assets to Headwater Exploration Inc.

Refining

Following the acquisition of Husky Energy in January 2021, Cenovus became Canada’s second-largest Canadian-based refiner and upgrader. Cenovus owns the Lima Refinery in Lima, Ohio, the Superior Refinery in Superior, Wisconsin and the Lloydminster refinery and upgrader in Lloydminster, Alberta. Cenovus has 50 percent ownership in two refineries in the United States: the

Wood River Refinery The Wood River Refinery is an oil refinery located in Roxana, Illinois, approximately north of St. Louis, Missouri, on the east side of the Mississippi River. The refinery is currently owned by Phillips 66 and Cenovus Energy and operated by the j ...

(Illinois) and

Borger, Texas Borger ( ) is the largest city in Hutchinson County, Texas, United States. The population was 12,551 at the 2020 census. Borger is named for businessman Asa Philip "Ace" Borger, who also established the Hutchinson County seat of Stinnett ...

refinery.

Phillips 66 The Phillips 66 Company is an American multinational energy company headquartered in Westchase, Houston, Texas. Its name, dating back to 1927 as a trademark of the Phillips Petroleum Company, helped ground the newly reconfigured Phillips 66. T ...

is the co-owner and operator. In August 2022, Cenovus reached an agreement to purchase bp’s 50% interest in the bp-Husky Toledo Refinery in Ohio. Cenovus has owned the other 50% of the refinery since its combination with Husky Energy in 2021.

Transportation

Cenovus owns a crude-by-rail loading facility near

Edmonton Edmonton ( ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city anchor ...

, Alberta – the

Bruderheim Bruderheim is a town in the Edmonton Metropolitan Region of Alberta, Canada. It is located just north of the junction of Highway 15 and Highway 45, approximately northeast of Edmonton. The town's name is derived from two German words: "Bru ...

Energy Terminal. The company was recognized for its rail safety performance in 2016, and for safe transportation of chemical products in 2017.

Technology

The primary technology Cenovus uses at its Foster Creek and Christina Lake projects is called

(SAGD). Cenovus also applies different associated technologies to enhance the SAGD process, such as electric submersible pumps at Foster Creek and solvent aided process (SAP) at Christina Lake. In 2011, the company began applying its blowdown boiler technology to improve the efficiency of water use at its oil sands operations.Technologies lower in situ bitumen recovery costs
/ref> In 2013, Cenovus developed its SkyStrat™ drilling rig that allows an exploratory rig to be flown into remote areas by helicopter piece-by-piece, set up to drill a test well, dismantled and airlifted away. The process requires no roads, meaning little disturbance to the boreal forest. The company received an Environmental Performance award for the SkyStrat™ program.

Potential mitigation of climate impacts

Cenovus is a member of Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero initiative, an alliance of oil sands companies working collectively with the federal and Alberta governments to achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the companies oil sands operations by 2050. According to Cenovus's Chief Sustainability Officer, the company is pursuing government support for decarbonization efforts, because " ese are not projects that make revenue. So for a corporation that is owned by shareholders to put 100 per cent of the costs into a project that doesn’t bring any revenue back, that is not something that a corporation can do." However, a report by the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices, a source of independent analysis on climate change issues funded by

Environment Canada Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC; french: Environnement et Changement climatique Canada),Environment and Climate Change Canada is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of the Environment ( ...

, recommended investing limited public dollars to capture "a share of growing, transition-opportunity markets" rather than in "assets at elevated risk of being stranded in global low-carbon scenarios" as fossil fuel demand "inevitably decline globally".

Leadership

Chairman of the Board

Michael A. Grandin, 2009–2017
Patrick D. Daniel, 2017–2020
Keith A. MacPhail, 2020–

President

Brian C. Ferguson, 2009–2017
Alexander J. Pourbaix, 2017–

References

External links

* {{Authority control Oil companies of Canada Natural gas companies of Canada Companies based in Calgary Canadian companies established in 2009 Energy companies established in 2009 Non-renewable resource companies established in 2009 Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange Companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange S&P/TSX 60 Corporate spin-offs 2009 establishments in Alberta