Debt-hating Pourbaix bets big to transform Cenovus into an integrated energy giant

By his own admission, the most frustrating period in Alex Pourbaix’s career was being forced to add a billion dollars of debt when oil prices crashed this spring. “After all the work we had done to get our balance sheet in shape, to see this company pack on debt in that very low-price environment was just profoundly frustrating to me,” said the CEO of Cenovus Energy Inc. as he described the motivation for Cenovus’...