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Providing coverage of Alaska and northern Canada's oil and gas industry
October 2008

Vol. 13, No. 41 Week of October 12, 2008

Oil Patch Insider

Viagra, cialis ... now cenovus

It didn’t exactly get the open-armed embrace the creators might have hoped for.

Someone, somehow, settled on Cenovus Energy as the handle for the new oil sands and refining independent being spun off from EnCana by mid-December, leaving EnCana to focus on natural gas.

As you might have expected, Brian Ferguson, the designated chief executive officer of the new entity, gushed over the choice for a company that will control the company’s northern Alberta oil sands operations and a refining joint venture with ConocoPhillips, including plants in Illinois and Texas.

He said the name “successfully captures the essence of what we want our North American integrated oil company to be — a strong enterprise with a sustainable, innovative and bright future.”

Cenovus — in case it’s not immediately obvious to everyone — represents progressive thinking, technical advances and respect for the environment in a new century, EnCana declared.

Origin of name a blending

Its origin is a blending “letter coupling and root origins,” EnCana said.

“Cen” represents an innovative way of doing business in the new century. “Novus” is taken from the Latin root word meaning new.

EnCana said that the combination of the two conveyed the “new ideas, new technologies and improved approaches to developing energy resources in a manner that reflects the company’s honor and deep-rooted respect for the environment.”

Work is under way on a Cenovus logo and brand. We can scarcely wait.

But it does make you wonder how many people lay awake at nights, tossing and turning, before arriving at a name no one seems quite sure how to pronounce.

E-mail comments to the Globe and Mail were less than rapturous:

— One said it “sounds like a skin disease.”

— Another thought Jay Leno had cautioned against investing in companies whose name sounds like planets from Star Wars (such as Enron).

— “It sounds like a new drug which could cause tingling sensations, vomiting, headaches, diarrhea, erectile dysfunction, loss of balance, etc…”

— “First Viagra, then Cialis, now Cenovus…”

But, one pragmatist, said: “Who cares? When it spins off, should we hold it, or sell it?”

—Gary Park






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