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Imperial Oil Ltd. chief executive Brad Corson will retire this spring after more than five turbulent years helming the oilsands giant.
Taking over on May 8 will be John Whelan, currently ExxonMobil Corp.‘s senior vice-president of conventional and heavy oil, the company said on Thursday.
Corson’s tenure as CEO began at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020, when crude prices crashed amid global lockdowns, sending producers such as Imperial scrambling to dramatically slash spending. He had previously served as ExxonMobil president, heading the company’s global upstream acquisition and divestment programs.
Under Corson, Imperial rapidly bounced back as commodity prices recovered following the pandemic, ushering in a period of record production and profit growth, driven by output gains at its Kearl oilsands mine and Cold Lake in-situ operations in Alberta. The company’s share price has climbed more than 200 per cent over the past five years.
The company’s environmental record under Corson, however, was mixed.
Imperial greenlit a new renewable diesel facility at its Strathcona, Alta., refinery and became a founding member of the oilsands sector’s decarbonization-focused Pathways Alliance, but the company also faced regulatory penalties over a massive leak at one of its facilities.
Imperial was hit with nine charges by the Alberta Energy Regulator earlier this month as a result of the release of an estimated 5.3 million litres of toxic wastewater that overflowed a berm at Kearl two years ago.
“Brad steered the company through the challenges of the global pandemic, with the organization emerging to deliver the strongest financial years in company history,” lead Imperial director David Cornhill said in a statement.
Corson’s departure comes as Canada’s oilpatch prepares to face a potential trade war with the United States, including a 10 per cent tariff on exports of Canadian energy to the U.S.
His replacement, Whelan, a native of St. John’s, Nfld., trained as a mechanical engineer before starting his career at ExxonMobil in Drayton Valley, Alta.
He was previously appointed vice-president of upstream production at Imperial in 2013 before his most recent posting at Exxon.
Imperial is one of Canada’s four largest oilsands producers. It reported net income of $4.8 billion last year, and upstream production of 460,000 barrels of oil-equivalent per day in the fourth quarter of 2024.
• Email: mpotkins@postmedia.com
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