Murphy Oil Company Ltd.

The Murphy Oil Company’s origins were in the lumber and banking business. In 1907, oil and gas production became more important to Murphy as it began to produce oil from the Caddo Field in northern Louisiana. In 1950, the company was incorporated in Louisiana as the Murphy Corporation, but it changed again and was reincorporated in Delaware in 1964, changing its name to the Murphy Oil Corporation. Today the corporation is an oil and gas exploration and production company with operations in North America and the United Kingdom. Murphy Oil acts as a holding company for all the wholly-owned subsidiaries. In Canada, the company’s focus is crude oil and natural gas exploration, production, and marketing of petroleum products.

The head office for Murphy Oil is located in Calgary, Alberta. The company has over fifty years of service in Canada, exploring and extracting oil in western Canada since the 1950s. In the last few years the company has increased its explorations by focusing on northern Alberta and British Columbia. The Ladyfern find in this area led to a massive two year rise in natural gas production. Unfortunately, Murphy Oil has not been able to follow up this success with further discoveries. In 2003, the decision was made to sell the majority of the oil and gas properties in the Western Basin. With these assets sold, the company redirected their efforts to higher yield areas. One is the Syncrude Oil Sands project, which Murphy Oil owns a 5 percent working interest. These Athabasca oil sands are Canada's largest source of crude oil production.