THE HOLISTIC OIL BARON.

By his own account, the most powerful man in Canada's oil patch is, at heart, a simple country boy. Gwyn Morgan, president and chief executive officer of EnCana Corp., the world's largest independent oil and gas producer, traces his core values and philosophy of life and business to his modest upbringing on a hardscrabble grain and livestock farm near Carstairs, Alta. Morgan has certainly moved on. By engineering the April 2002 merger of two oil and gas behemoths, Alberta Energy Co. Ltd. (which Morgan helped establish in the 1970s and had headed since 1994) and PanCanadian Energy Corp., the farmer's son vaulted from a position of relative obscurity to someone who readily commands attention on the national stage. Morgan's nose for the main chance surfaced again in October 2001 when he heard about the abrupt departure of David Tuer as chief executive of PanCanadian, the recently spun-off energy unit of Canadian Pacific Ltd. Morgan initiated backroom negotiations with David O'Brien, the former chairman, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Canadian Pacific who had replaced Tuer on an interim basis at PanCanadian.