History of the petroleum industry in Canada
Although the conventional oil and gas industry in western Canada is mature, the country's Arctic and offshore petroleum resources are mostly in early stages of exploration and development.
"[3] According to Peter McKenzie-Brown, "[w]hen James Miller Williams became interested and visited the site in 1856, Tripp unloaded his hopes, his dreams and the properties of his company, saving for himself a spot on the payroll as landman.
[5] The Sarnia Observer and Lambton Advertiser, quoting from the Woodstock Sentinel, published on page two on August 5, 1858:[6] It was 12 years after drilling the first oil well in Baku settlement (Bibi-Heybat) in 1846 on Apsheron peninsula.
For a week the oil gushed unchecked at levels reported as high as 3,000 barrels per day, eventually coating the distant waters of Lake St. Clair with a black film.
[9] News of the gusher spread quickly and was reported in the Hamilton Times four days later:[10] I have just time to mention that to-day at half past eleven o'clock, a.m., Mr. John Shaw, from Kingston, C. W., tapped a vein of oil in his well, at a depth of one hundred and fifty-eight feet in the rock, which filled the surface well, (forty-five feet to the rock) and the conductors [sic] in the course of fifteen minutes, and immediately commenced flowing.
However, Petrolia drillers unquestionably helped drill for oil in Java, Peru, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, Venezuela, Persia, Romania, Austria and Germany.
Reports from around 1820 tell of youngsters at Lake Ainslie, Nova Scotia, amusing themselves by driving sticks into the ground, pulling them out, then lighting the escaping natural gas.
Noting that the rock formations penetrated in this well were common in western Canada, he prophesied correctly that the territory would some day produce large volumes of natural gas.
"[3] In 1874, Brown filed the following affidavit with Donald Thompson, the resident solicitor at Pincher Creek:[13] I was engaged as a guide and packer by the eminent geologist Dr. George M. Dawson, and he asked me if I had seen oil seepages in that area, and if I did see them, would I be able to recognize them.
Subsequently some Stoney Indians came to my camp and I mixed up some molasses and coal oil and gave it to them to drink, and told them if they found anything that tasted or smelled like that to let me know.
Investors lined up outside makeshift brokerage houses to get in on exploration activity triggered by the May 14, 1914 discovery of wet gas and oil at Turner Valley, southwest of Calgary.
"[3] Pioneered in Turner Valley, natural gas liquids extraction eventually became an important Canadian industry in its own right, as the story of its development illustrates.
Seeing it you can imagine what Dante's inferno is like ... a rushing torrent of flame, shooting 40 feet (12 m) high ... a ruddy glow to be seen for 50 miles (80 km) ... most awe-inspiring spectacle ... men have seen the hosts of hell rising ... the titanic monster glowering from the depths of Hades ...
"[3] "The federal government owned the mineral rights not held by the Canadian Pacific Railway, the Calgary & Edmonton Corporation, or individual homesteads.
"[3] "An earlier effort to control waste resulted in an Order in Council made on April 26, 1922, prohibiting offset drilling closer than 70 metres (230 ft) from any lease boundary.
"[3] "During 1932, the newly created Turner Valley Gas Conservation Board proposed cutting production in half and unitizing the field to reduce waste.
"[3] "Besides contributing to conservation, solving Turner Valley's technical challenges with innovative technology also helped earn the field a place in early oil and gas history.
Many small wells were successfully drilled in Western Canada in the pre-war years, but prior to the Second World War there were no big oil discoveries outside Turner Valley.
In one journalist's words,"The well had barely punched into the main producing reservoir a mile below the surface when a mighty surge of pressure shot the drilling mud up through the pipe and 150 feet (46 m) into the air.
Early reef discoveries included Redwater in 1948, Golden Spike in 1949, Wizard Lake, Fenn Big Valley and Bonnie Glen in 1951 and Westerose in 1952.
The Turner Valley petroleum reservoirs near Calgary had been on production for nearly 35 years, and the Devonian reef at Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories had been discovered a quarter of a century earlier.
This pipeline accompanied the expansion and water flooding of the oilfield, and began bringing 600 cubic metres of oil per day to Zama, in northwestern Alberta, in early 1985.
In its March 1949 report, the Dinning Commission supported the principle that Albertans should have first call on provincial natural gas supplies, and that Canadians should have priority over foreign users if an exportable surplus developed.
The federal government, like Alberta, treated natural gas as a resource that was so important for national security that domestic supply needed to be guaranteed into the foreseeable future before exports would be allowed.
Among the first group of applicants hoping to remove natural gas from Alberta was Westcoast Transmission Co. Ltd., backed by British Columbia-born entrepreneur Frank McMahon.
Built in the summer seasons of 1956 and 1957, the line moved gas from the Fort St. John and Peace River areas 1,250 kilometres to Vancouver and the American border.
By constructing its natural gas mainline along an entirely Canadian route, TCPL accommodated nationalist sentiments, solving a political problem for the federal government.
The government restricted debate on the bill in order to get construction underway by June, knowing that delays beyond that month would postpone the entire project a year.
After quick repairs, the line delivered Alberta gas to Port Arthur before the end of the year, making the entire trip on its own wellhead pressure.
With these events - the discovery and development of oil and gas reservoirs and of processing and transportation infrastructure - Canada's petroleum industry established its foundations.
