International Drillers

[2][3] Many of the International Drillers grew up learning the oil business in Enniskillen County and provided the skilled labour, expertise and technology necessary for the development of the global petroleum industry.

[3][5] Between December 1873 to the mid-1940s, over 500 drillers from Lambton County brought Canadian expertise and equipment to 87 countries and played key roles in finding and developing oil fields in Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and South America.

[2][6] As International Drillers' brought the tools and technology from Lambton County abroad, the Canadian pole-tool system of drilling was employed in oil fields across the globe from the 1870s to the 1940s.

[7] Typically, International Drillers grew up learning the oil trade locally and signed contracts of one, three or five years in duration.

[16] In 1917, Historian Victor Ross claimed that the International Drillers from Lambton County had a vital impact on the development of the global oil industry: No other oil centre on the American Continent has contributed so many expert drillers and oil operators to foreign countries for the production and development of the industry...They have gone from there to the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, the West Indies, Austria, Germany, Russia, Egypt, Sinai, East Africa, Madagascar, Persia, India, Burma, the Orient, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand and have been foremost in locating oil territory, in mechanical inventions, in their methods of production and in the marketing of the product.