During its early years, Encana established its reputation as Canada's flagship energy company and an icon of Western Canadian business.

CPOG had been founded in 1958 by the Canadian Pacific Railway as a vehicle to produce petroleum on the land grants it had received in the nineteenth century.

Central-Del Rio was a small independent producer run by oilman Neil McQueen, and the CPOG had acquired gradually a majority holding in the company.

After the creation of PanCanadian, Canadian Pacific Limited remained the company's majority shareholder with approximately an 87 per cent stake.

The Alberta Energy Company was created in 1973 by the provincial government under premier Peter Lougheed as a mechanism for Albertans to invest in the Syncrude project.

[1] At a press conference on 25 October 2005, Morgan announced that he would retire from the presidency at the end of the year and that his replacement would be chief operating officer Randall K. Eresman.

Eresman, a native of Medicine Hat, had begun working for the Alberta Energy Company as a summer student in 1978 and had joined it as an employee in 1980 while studying engineering at the University of Wyoming.

Morgan declared his trust in Eresman to lead the company, saying, "you don't put your life and your passion behind something unless you know that you have the right kind of person to carry it on.

This was in line with the rules that "favor minority stakes over takeovers" since Prime Minister Stephen Harper's December 7, 2012 prohibition of purchases by state-owned enterprises seeking to invest in Canadian oil.

Upon Eresman's resignation, company director Clayton H. Woitas was made interim president and put in charge of the search for a replacement.

Asked if the board tried to persuade Eresman to stay, Woitas responded that "it was time to move on with a fresh face representing Encana.

[15] Gwyn Morgan provided a written statement about the deal that read, "I'm deeply saddened that, as a result of the disastrous policies of the Trudeau government, what was once the largest Canadian-headquartered energy producer now sees both its CEO and the core of its asset base located in the U.S."[16] In an editorial he wrote a two weeks later, he said that after stepping down as president in 2005, he "could never have imagined that, a dozen years later, the company would decide to export itself.

"[18] In October 2019, the company announced plans to move its operations from Canada to Denver, where its CEO lived, and change its name to Ovintiv.

Tim Pickering, an asset manager in Calgary, stated that the announcement "highlights what we’ve known all along, that outside foreign investment is losing interest in the Canadian energy sector."

Meanwhile, Martin Pelletier, a portfolio manager in Calgary, said that "risk is a critical factor when making capital-allocation decisions, and currently Canada is viewed as a high-risk region.

Morgan laid the blame on the Liberal federal government, which he believed had created a climate hostile to energy investment.

In January 2021, Kimmeridge Energy Management, a private equity firm that owned 2.4 per cent of Ovintiv, released a report on the company's poor performance.