Trans-Canada Sale

A quiet, young (43), round-faced Alberta oil millionaire last week became the largest single stockholder in Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Ltd., the vast and controversial enterprise that will bring Western gas to Eastern Canada. In Manhattan, Calgary Oilman Robert Arthur Brown Jr. bought the last of Tennessee Gas Transmission Co.'s Trans-Canada holdings, giving his fast-rising Home Oil Co. Ltd. a 12% holding in Trans-Canada (v. Texas Oilman Clint Murchison's 8%. and British American Oil's 5%). By buying out Tennessee at upwards of $25 a share, Bobby Brown replaced Tennessee's President Gardiner Symonds as the dominant figure in Trans-Canada.

Brown was known to be buying up Trans-Canada shares, but few suspected he had gone so far so fast. From Robert Brown Sr.. Bobby inherited the fledgling (250 bbl. daily) Federated Petroleums Ltd. -and his father's dream to become the biggest Canadian in the industry. Concentrating on buying up proven wens rather than on exploration, he had grown enough by 1955 to take over the 26-year-old Home Oil Co. Ltd., forming one of Canada's biggest independent oil producers. Home Oil managed to get 162,000 Trans-Canada shares in last spring's public subscription, later picked up 100,000 more (reportedly from the U.S. controlled Hudson's Bay Oil & Gas Co. Ltd.). buiit its holdings to 702,000 shares (worth almost $16 million) by the Tennessee purchase. Said a Brown aide: "Never forget that he is going to be on the top of the heap, because he never forgets."

Even as Trans-Canada's ownership changed. Prime Minister John Diefen-baker's Tories, throttled by closure in Parliament's furious pipeline debate last spring, last week moved to get the full story of the late Liberal regime's deal to lend $50 million to U.S. oilmen to build the 2,294-mile pipeline. As one of its first legislative acts, the Tory government created a royal commission on Canada's energy resources -with a mandate to delve into Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Ltd.'s ownership, financial structure, rates and export plans, relations with gas producers.

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