Imperial Oil Limited has played a leading role in the Canadian petroleum industry for more than a century and has grown to become one of the country's largest integrated oil companies.

Imperial conducts its operations in three main segments natural resources, petroleum products and chemicals. Natural resource operations are managed by Esso Resources Canada Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary based in Calgary, Alberta. The company is Canada's largest producer of conventional crude oil and bitumen (a type of very heavy oil), as well as a leading producer of natural gas. It is also a coal producer and has interests in the mining industry. Imperial's petroleum product business is managed by Esso Petroleum Canada, a Toronto-based division that operates five refineries across the country and has an extensive network of retail and wholesale outlets. Esso Chemical Canada, also a Toronto-based division, is one of the country's major suppliers of primary petrochemicals and fertilizer. It operates four manufacturing plants—the two largest are in Sarnia, Ontario and Redwater, Alberta.
 

1. Canada's first gasoline station was opened by Imperial in 1907 in Vancouver. 2. A display of motoring memorabilia from Imperial's archives in Toronto.

The company's beginnings go back to September 8, 1880, when sixteen southwestern Ontario oil refiners pooled their resources and formed The Imperial Oil Company, headquartered in London, Ontario. It was authorized to find, produce, refine and distribute petroleum and its products throughout Canada. The young company was quick to find ways of upgrading its products—in those days mainly lamp oil, axle grease and other lubricants, wax and candles—and to extend its marketing reach to cities such as Montreal and Winnipeg. Demand for products soon began to exceed supply and Imperial was badly in need of capital to finance expansion. After failing to raise the money at home or in England, Imperial sold a majority interest to an American firm, Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), which already had affiliates in Canada. In February 1899, Imperial took over all of Standard's Canadian assets, including a refinery in Sarnia, where the company moved its operations and head office.

The alliance helped provide the impetus for the unfolding of the company's first half century—a period of rapid expansion in Imperial's distribution network. Imperial opened Canada's first gasoline station in 1907 and, while the Great War of 1914–1918 raged, it built refineries in or near the cities of Vancouver, Regina, Montreal and Halifax. These were also the years in which Imperial ceased to be largely a refiner and distributor of petroleum products and became an active explorer and producer as well. Oil was discovered in Norman Wells, N.W.T. in 1920 and the Turner Valley field in Alberta was developed in the 1920s; however, little of consequence was found during the next two decades.

During World War II, the company produced a large part of the aviation gasoline for the Allied air training activities in Canada and participated in the production of synthetic rubber for the war effort. Entering the postwar era, there was increased demand for crude oil and serious concern about future supplies. By 1947, more than 90 per cent of Canada's crude oil was being imported. Then, in February 1947, Imperial made a very major oil discovery at Leduc, Alberta, that signaled the real In the late 1940s and into the fifties and sixties, Imperial was busy growing to accommodate its expanding oil-field operations, by enlarging its refining capacity—new refineries went on stream in Edmonton and Winnipeg in 1948 and 1951 respectively—and enlarging its pipeline network. On the marketing side, service stations changed their appearance to become more compatible with the neighbourhood. Highway service centres became a new landmark, and self-serve stations joined the Esso chain in 1970, the first in Canada. During the seventies, Imperial introduced unleaded and premium unleaded fuel and more recently "No Trouble" gasoline containing an additive that removes deposits from fouled fuel injectors and dirty carburetors. Imperial also began to expand its operations to include the manufacture of petrochemicals, establishing a petrochemical department in 1955. In the early sixties, Imperial

moved into the fertilizer market, first with a string of fertilizer warehouses across the West, then with its own world-scale fertilizer complex at Redwater, Alberta, completed in 1969. The company's chemical activities continued to expand in the seventies and eighties.
 

1. Imperial pioneered the use of artificial islands, such as the one shown here in the Beaufort Sea, to explore for oil in Canada's Arctic waters. 2. Steam pipes and horse head pumps at Imperial's heavy-oil project at Cold Lake, where bitumen is produced from the Alberta oil sands. beginnings of Canada as a major oilproducing country.

In the sixties it had become apparent that the reserves of conventional crude oil in western Canada, although substantial, were unlikely to prove capable of meeting all the country's future oil requirements and the company moved its search for oil into the far north, devising new drilling methods to minimize damage to the delicate Arctic environment, and constructing artificial islands from which to drill in the Beaufort Sea. One of the company's biggest investments lies just south of the Arctic Circle at Norman Wells where an expansion project to develop the Norman Wells oil field was completed in 1985. Imperial also moved its search for oil into another kind of "frontier"—the petroleum locked underground in the molasseslike deposits of bitumen at Cold Lake, Alberta and in the tarry surface sands of nearby Athabasca region. Imperial played a leading role in the development of the Syncrude oil sands mining project in Alberta, completed in 1978, in which Imperial has a 25 per cent interest. At Cold Lake, Alberta, after more than two decades of experimentation into techniques for producing heavy oil from the oil sands through steam injection, Imperial started commercial bitumen production in 1985.

Throughout its long history Imperial has endeavoured to be an outstanding member of the Canadian business community by providing quality products and services at competitive prices, undertaking an active program of research and development, maintaining an ongoing contribution program and regarding the protection of the environment as a key responsibility. The company's goal is to increase shareholder value through growth in earnings, through continuous improvement in the efficiency of its operations, and through the steady development and renewal of its inventory of short-term and long-term investment prospects.