Imperial Oil Oil discovered the Leduc Woodbend Devonian oil reef in 1947, marking the beginning of the contemporary period in Canadian oil and gas development. Drilling began on the landmark discovery well Leduc No. 1 on November 20, 1946. In 1989, Imperial Oil acquired Texaco's Canadian operations. From the 1934-35 season through the 1975-76 season, Imperial Oil was a sponsor of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. program "Hockey Night in Canada" for both radio and television broadcasts. In February 2013, Richard Kruger, President of ExxonMobil Production Co. and a Vice President of Exxon Mobil Corp., was appointed to be Chief Executive of Imperial
History of the petroleum industry in Canada (oil sands and heavy oil) production in 1978, exactly two centuries after Peter Pond's first sighting of the oil sands. But before the plant shipped its first barrel of oil, the project went through many trials. The reason for the long gap between approval and completion was an alarming escalation of costs that beset all major North American projects in the 1970s. High inflation multiplied budgets for practically every aspect of the Syncrude project. Reviewing project costs in late 1973, the Syncrude consortium found that costs had more than doubled, from $1 billion to $2.3 billion. In December 1974, Atlantic Richfield (whose American parent needed