Former Petro-Canada Boss Dead

Wilbert/Bill Hopper, the senior civil servant and business executive who helped build Petro Canada Inc. into one of the country’s biggest integrated oil companies, has died.

Hopper died at the Queensway Carleton Hospital in Ottawa on Monday after an illness. He was 73.

Hopper was the longtime president, chief executive and chairman of Petro-Canada, a the Calgary-based former Crown corporation privatized in the early 1990s.

Born in Ottawa in 1933, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in geology from the American University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario in London.

In 1955, he joined Imperial Oil Ltd. and in 1973 he became assistant deputy minister of energy policy in the federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.

In 1975, he helped form Petro-Canada as a federal Crown corporation and was appointed president and CEO in 1976. In 1979, he also added the chairman’s title and worked until 1993 when he retired after Petro-Canada was privatized.

During Hopper’s 15 years at Petro-Canada, the company developed its extensive refining and gasoline station presence by acquiring Belgian-owned Petrofina Canada, as well as the assets of British-owned BP Canada and Gulf Canada.

With Hopper at the helm, Petro-Canada was privatized in 1991 and the first set of shares were sold off to the public in an initial public offering.

From 1983 to 1992, he was also chairman of the board of Westcoast Energy Inc., a Vancouver-based natural gas shipper now owned by Duke Energy Corp.

In 1985, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for what the selectors called Hopper’s “encyclopedic knowledge of energy and of the environment in which the industry operates has enabled him to skillfully guide the development of the company into a major component of this country’s petroleum industry.”