Royalite Oil Company Ltd.

Royalite Oil was one of the founding companies of the Alberta oil and gas industry. With the purchase of Calgary Petroleum Products, Imperial Oil reorganized it as the Royalite Oil Company in 1921. Until 1962, when the company was bought by British America Oil, Royalite held a major presence in western Canada. Royalite drilled its first well and made its first major discovery in 1924 when Royalite No. 4 struck gas, thereby gaining control of the wells in Turner Valley. In 1949, Imperial sold its interest in Royalite to Dominion Securities. In the same year the company purchased the rights to the Redwater field from the Alberta government. This aggressive growth continued under the control of Dominion Securities. It bought and built refineries, and took over Hi-Way Refineries. By 1958, Royalite was an oil company with production, transportation, refining, and marketing facilities in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Royalite's expansion ended when it was acquired by British American Oil. In 1964, British American combined all of its western Canada marketing companies including Royalite into a new company, Purity 99 Oil Company Ltd. Royalite then gained control over Purity in 1965. However, Royalite's exploration, production, pipeline, and refinery operations were turned over to British American. Finally in 1969, Royalite was completely absorbed into British American and Shawinigan Chemicals under the name Gulf Oil Canada Ltd. With this amalgamation, Royalite became part of a major Canadian corporation.