Few Southern Alberta Business Hall of Fame laureates have given away as much as Stanley Owerko, and fewer still built the company that made it possible from scratch. Owerko, who moved to Alberta from Saskatchewan in 1962, joins the 2026 Hall of Fame class after a career spent building one of North America’s largest privately held midstream energy companies, followed by decades of philanthropy across Calgary and beyond. Few local philanthropists have matched the geographic reach of their giving, which stretches from a children’s hospital in Calgary to a seminary outside Kyiv.
Building Petrogas Energy Corp
In 1986, Owerko founded Petrogas Energy Corp., growing it into one of the largest privately held midstream energy and logistics companies in North America, marketing propane, butane, and crude oil across the continent and internationally. Building a privately held company to that scale, without the visibility that comes with a public listing, required Owerko to compete for customers and capital purely on relationships and results, a discipline that has carried over into how methodically the family now approaches its giving. He continues to hold a number of principal shareholder positions today, including CEO and President of SAM Holdings Ltd., the family’s business enterprise, CEO of Midstream Energy Partners, CEO of General Land & Power, and CEO and Director of Whitemud Resources Inc. Owerko is married to Marge Owerko, and together they have three children and five grandchildren.
Tens of Millions Toward Children’s Health and Cancer Care
Since 2010, as Patrons of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Owerkos have committed $70 million to the children’s hospital, including $50 million toward building the Centre for Research & Innovative Care. Their giving has supported brain health research for kids, including work on neurodevelopmental disorders and mental health treatment, at the Owerko Family Walk-in Services Clinic at The Summit. More recently, they committed $30 million to the OWN.Cancer Campaign for the new Arthur J.E. Child Comprehensive Cancer Centre, funding work in immunotherapy, biomanufacturing, and clinical trials, and partnered with the Alberta Government to acquire two MR Linac machines, of which there are only two others in Canada, with an initial focus on treating prostate and pancreatic cancer.
Housing, Education, and Ties to Ukraine
The Owerkos have also backed affordable housing, committing $3 million to Bishops Manor, which provides housing for more than 250 vulnerable Calgarians, including more than thirty children. A gift of $1.5 million helped St. Mary’s University in south Calgary open its Heritage Centre, expanding student enrolment capacity. Globally, they are members of the Canadian Chapter of the Patrons of the Arts and have contributed to the restoration and preservation of artwork at the Vatican and its museums. They are also anchor supporters of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Canada and Ukraine, having funded a church, residence, and seminary near Kyiv that opened in 2017, where 64 young men are currently studying to become priests. After the war in Ukraine began in 2022, Stan and Marge helped raise more than $3 million, used by the International Red Cross and Catholic Church charities in Ukraine to provide food, clothing, medicine, and shelter to displaced mothers and children. Closer to home, they have long supported the United Way, the Food Bank, the Mustard Seed, and Inn from the Cold, and Stan has spent more than 40 years supporting his extended family of roughly 350 descendants in Ukraine, funding university education for 55 students to date. As Owerko describes his approach to giving, it comes down to people helping people. Few Hall of Fame laureates have paired a single industry career with a philanthropic footprint that spans hospitals, universities, affordable housing, and a war zone overseas, and the Owerkos’ commitment to family, both in Calgary and in Ukraine, runs through nearly all of it.
Owerko’s full laureate biography is available on the Southern Alberta Business Hall of Fame website, where he was inducted as part of the 2026 class alongside his wife Marge’s decades of steady partnership in the family’s philanthropic work.
When a business built on propane and crude oil ends up funding cancer research, seminaries, and family across two continents, what does that say about the true measure of a company’s success?
