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Mitchell has said that from the outset "my objective was to have the government ease out," adding that this was "extremely difficult." By the late 1980s, the government stake had been reduced to 44 percent but it took 18 years before its final interest in AEC was sold. By 1993 Ralph Klein was steering the Conservative government on a far more laissez faire, market-based course that resembled the old Social Credit regime more than Peter Lougheed's interventionist rule. With the government shackles removed, Mitchell retired as CEO that year, succeeded by Gwyn Morgan.
Morgan had joined AEC within months of its formation to manage its first operations, development of the Suffield-block gas resources. Like Mitchell, Morgan's work ethic was forged early in the demanding crucible of hard realities, in this case a hardscrabble farm south of Calgary which meant growing up with hours of chores every day and where he, too, discovered the working end of a shovel, digging the ditch that brought running water to the family's farmhouse.
Growing revenues from its legacy properties at Suffield and in the oil sands, debt financing, and a multi-billion-dollar spree of corporate acquisitions and investments propelled AEC's growth for 27 years. Not all the investments were crowned with glory. Diversifications into steel, coal mining, petrochemical products, and forestry brought mixed results at best, until these properties were finally all disposed of by 1995, allowing AEC to focus on oil and gas exploration, production, and marketing.
By the 21st century, AEC and Pan Canadian were the largest Canadian-owned oil and gas producers. PanCanadian, with a 90-year headstart, was somewhat larger than its crosstown rival in terms of production, revenue, earnings, and exploration holdings — in terms of everything except debt, of which AEC had more.
The door was opened for a merger when Canadian Pacific in 2001 spun off Pan Canadian together with its mining, hotel, and forestry businesses to focus on its original transportation joh. When David Tuer suddenly resigned as Pan Canadian CEO after Canadian Pacific had spun it off, Morgan initiated talks that culminated in Pan Canadian's acquisition of AEC on a share swap that gave Pan Canadian shareholders 56 percent and AEC shareholders 44 percent of what was then named EnCana Corporation, suddenly the world's largest independent oil and gas producer.
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