2 weeks Ago By Meghan Potkins
A C-suite overhaul is underway at one of Canada’s fastest-growing oil and gas companies, , with the company announcing Thursday that chief executive Rob Morgan will step down. Executive chairman Adam Waterous, the investment banker turned oilman who created Strathcona and engineered its rapid rise from a junior oil firm to the country’s fifth-largest oil producer, will continue to oversee the Calgary-based company. However, the company said it will move away from having a single executive team overseeing all assets and instead adopt four distinct business units, each with its own president.
Each unit will report to newly promoted chief operating officer Dale Babiak and chief commercial officer Connie De Ciancio. Chief financial officer Connor Waterous will continue in his role. Each president will be accountable for their unit’s performance, the company said in a release, though higher-level capital allocation decisions, business development, finance, accounting and other limited corporate services will remain at Strathcona’s corporate level.
Waterous called the changes a “logical evolution” for Strathcona. “While Strathcona has grown significantly in recent years, our aim is to maintain the same mindset we had as a start-up: lean, focused and accountable for our performance,” he said in the release. “Strathcona’s board of directors and I have the utmost confidence in each of Strathcona’s new leaders, and we look forward to supporting them in their new roles.
” The company’s four new business units will be focused on managing key assets in Cold Lake, Alta., the Montney, as well as conventional and heavy oil plays in Lloydminster, Alta. Morgan has been with Strathcona since its inception in 2020, when Waterous’ oil and gas-focused private-equity firm, Waterous Energy Fund, created Strathcona through the merger of two smaller producers.
An engineer who joined the executive ranks at upstream firms Crew Energy Inc. and Harvest Operations Corp. before becoming CEO of Strathcona’s predecessor, Cona Resources Ltd.
, in 2017, Morgan is set to retire on Oct. 31. He will be replaced on Strathcona’s board of directors by David Roosth, managing director of the Waterous Energy Fund.
The leadership shakeup comes just 14 months after Waterous made a bold move to take the company public through the acquisition of rival Pipestone Energy Corp. The all-share purchase followed a number of acquisitions aimed at building the company into a significant player in the oilpatch, with production this year averaging an estimated 185,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The company has also seemed willing to meet criticism of the sector’s outsized carbon emissions with action.
Strathcona was the first to strike a deal with Ottawa that could see $2 billion in move forward on the company’s thermal developments in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The first of those projects is targeted for a final investment decision in mid-2025. Waterous thanked Morgan in a statement Thursday, citing his contributions to the company’s evolution.
“(F)rom a junior oil company with approximately 17,000 barrels per day of production, 130 MMboe of proved plus probable reserves and fewer than 200 employees, into Canada’s fifth-largest oil producer, growing production approximately 11-fold, reserves 20-fold and our employee base fourfold,” he said. “Rob has been a first-class partner to Waterous Energy Fund from the beginning, and we wish Rob all the best in his future.”.
