"“Becoming Imperial: Canada’s Downstream Industry and Standard Oil, 1890-1939”"

In late 19th century Canada, oil’s status as a favored industry of both Liberal and Conservative governments sheltered it from international competition through a variety of measures. The establishment of a number of tariff and non-tariff barriers also targeted Standard Oil and were designed to maintain the health of smaller domestic refineries, enabling the Imperial Oil Company, a fully integrated and technologically sophisticated competitor hindered Standard Oil’s entry into the Canadian market. By the late 1880s, Imperial Oil represented about half of Canada’s refining capacity in the 1880s. Nevertheless, Standard managed to export some volumes of refined product to Canada through commissioned agents and jobbers. Greater volumes of Standard product entered Canada after 1893 causing a drop in prices, further narrowing refiners’ margins. Lower prices drove a number of small refiners out of business, creating a market for refined product characterized by a duopoly until Standard’s acquisition of Imperial in 1898. Imperial Oil became a vital component in Standard Oil of New Jersey’s foreign operations, in part because Canadian tax laws were more advantageous. In that capacity, Imperial obtained production for their downstream operations in Canada from Peru and Columbia. By focusing on the protection of the downstream side of the Canadian petroleum industry until 1898, the article explains how protectionist federal policies “hot-housed” the growth of the Canadian petroleum industry by sheltering it from international competition, how entrepreneurs shaped the industry’s organization and facilitated technological change, and how foreign capital and ownership influenced the scope and scale of the industry.