Leduc No. 1
Encyclopedia
Leduc No. 1 was a major crude oil discovery made near Leduc
, Alberta
, Canada on February 13, 1947. It provided the geological key to Alberta's most prolific conventional oil reserves and resulted in a boom in petroleum
exploration and development across Western Canada
. The discovery transformed the Alberta economy; oil and gas supplanted farming as the primary industry and resulted in the province becoming one of the richest in the country. Nationally, the discovery allowed Canada to become self-sufficient within a decade and ultimately a major exporter of oil.
The discovery followed years of exploratory failures throughout the province. Imperial Oil
had spent millions of dollars drilling 133 dry holes in the previous years as only minor discoveries were made. Leduc No. 1 proved that oil was trapped in what became known as the Leduc Formation
and resulted in numerous major discoveries across the prairies. Leduc No. 1 produced 317,000 barrels of oil and 323 million cubic feet of natural gas before it was decommissioned in 1974, and was part of the Leduc-Woodbend oilfield that has produced over 300 million barrels of oil total.
Billions of investment dollars flowed into Alberta and were followed by massive immigration to the province following the discovery. Alberta's two major cities saw their populations double within a few years. Calgary
grew into a major financial centre and within two decades had the highest number of millionaires in Canada, per capita. The provincial capital of Edmonton
, immediately northeast of the discovery, became a major petroleum production centre. A farming community with fewer than 900 residents in 1947, Leduc grew to become Alberta's 13th city, while several towns, including Devon
and Swan Hills
, were founded to support workers in the oil and gas industry.
Leduc No. 1 and the Leduc-Woodbend oil field were designated a National Historic Site in 1990.
peoples used it to pitch
canoes and to act as a medicinal ointment. Pioneer settlers to southern Alberta in the late 19th century noticed that an oily film occasionally covered pools of water, and that the air had unusual odours at times. In 1911, Ontario
-born settler William Herron identified the nature of the odours from his time working in oil field
s in Pennsylvania
. He convinced Calgary businessman Archibald Dingman and Member of Parliament
R. B. Bennett
to visit the site near Turner Valley
. The trio gathered four other investors, formed the Calgary Petroleum Products Company, Ltd. and began developing the region in search of oil. The company drilled three wells beginning in 1913, and on May 14, 1914, the third struck a significant reserve at a depth of 820 metres (2,690.3 ft). Excitement reached a fevered pitch in Calgary once word of the Turner Valley strike reached town. Over 500 oil exploration companies were formed within days, the majority of which existed only to bilk unwitting citizens by selling shares in companies that owned no land and had no intention of drilling for oil.
In actual fact, oil was not discovered initially, but rather naphtha
– a form of natural gas – and Calgary settled into an economic recession that accompanied the outset of the First World War. A second major natural gas discovery brought renewed interest in 1924 when the Royalite No. 4 well blew in in the form of a mammoth fire that burned uncontrolled for nearly a month. This find was made at a depth of 1140 metres (3,740.2 ft). The new discovery resulted in the drilling of hundreds of wells in the region over the next 20 years. The first major crude oil discovery at Turner Valley was made in 1936 at a depth of 2080 metres (6,824.1 ft), the deepest well in Alberta at the time. The Turner Valley oil field reached a peak production of 10 million barrels in 1942, four years after it was recognized as the largest oil field in the British Empire
.
In the 30 years following the initial discovery of 1914, oil companies spent over $150 million on exploration and development but found no major reserves of note. The provincial government resorted to subsidies and tax relief for companies to encourage further exploration. Imperial Oil
alone had drilled 133 wildcat wells throughout the province, all of which failed to yield significant quantities of oil. By the mid 1940s, the company neared the decision of abandoning the search for oil in the province in favour of focusing on the production synthetic gasoline out of natural gas. While the majority of the company's efforts drilled down only into Cretaceous
levels where the Turner Valley strike was discovered, some of Imperial's geologists believed that greater reserves could be found deeper below the earth's surface. They convinced the company's technical committee to attempt one more deep drilling effort. Imperial's board of directors reluctantly supported the new effort, but made it known that this well, initially known as Wildcat No. 134, would be the company's last-chance effort.
. He had his staff determine the best location for the new well. The majority of the team favoured a triangular area that stretched between Calgary
and Edmonton
in central Alberta, up to Grande Prairie
in the northwest. The company then set out to acquire surface lease rights to tracts of land in the region. Imperial acquired rights to over 200,000 acres of land southwest of Edmonton by the end of spring and began surveying the area for the best place to begin drilling. Seismic tests produced two possible candidates: one near the village of Leduc
and another farther to the southwest near Pigeon Lake
. Though the Pigeon Lake spot was viewed by geologists as a more promising location, the team chose Leduc due to the location's proximity to major roadways and the North Saskatchewan River
. This decision proved fortuitous, as a later effort by Imperial to drill at Pigeon Lake resulted in another dry hole.
The farmstead of Mike Turta, 15 km west of Leduc, was chosen as the drilling site. As Turta lacked mineral rights
, Imperial initially paid him only $250 per year to lease his land. Imperial brought Vern Hunter, nicknamed "Dry Hole" as a result of of his numerous past failures, to lead the drilling team. Hunter was skeptical that the new site would lead to success. He expected it would fail like previous ventures and that Imperial would then limit its focus to Alberta's natural gas fields. The drilling site was a true wildcat – no other wells drilled within 80 kilometres (49.7 mi) of Turta's farm – and Imperial was willing to go as deep as 2100 metres (6,889.8 ft) in this search.
Drilling of Leduc No. 1 began November 20, 1946. Several drill stem test
s down to depths of 1200 metres (3,937 ft) showed only traces of oil and natural gas. As drilling passed into Mesozoic
depths, tests indicated large quantities of natural gas and some oil. It was a small find, and close to the limits of the Paleozoic Era
, where conventional wisdom of the time held that oil was unlikely to be found. Imperial was left to choose whether to begin production of this small find, or drill deeper and risk having the byproducts of drilling ruin the company's ability to complete a well at the depth of this find. Imperial chose to continue drilling. When drilling reached 1536 metres (5,039.4 ft), into the Devonian Era
, tests showed promising results. On February 3, 1947, a test sent a geyser shooting out of the drilling hole and up half the height of the drilling derrick, covering a worker with oil.
By this point, Imperial knew they had hit upon a strike. The company pressed Hunter to name a date when the well could come in. He later stated: "The crew and I were experts at abandoning wells but we didn't know much about completing them. I named February 13 and started praying." Imperial invited the public to witness as the well came in. However, the machinery broke down on that morning. The crew worked most of the day trying to fix the machinery, while some of guests began to leave, fearing another disappointment. Shortly before 4 p.m., the crew finally cleared the wellhead and the 500 people who remained despite the bitter cold bore witness Leduc No. 1 came to life. People felt a rumbling in the ground, while roughneck
s opened release valves. The youngest member of the crew was given the honour of "flaring" the well. As the mixture of crude oil and gas spewed from a release pipe, the young man hurled a burning sack onto the mixture, igniting the fuel and sending flames 15 metres (49.2 ft) into the air. Imperial held a party in Edmonton that night in celebration of its achievement.
that covered the majority of the prairies
was known to be a prime forming ground for oil. Scientists struggled to understand how such a location could have produced only the two oil fields that were known to exist in 1946. It was believed that the basin under Alberta was shaped like a hinge, extending from the Rocky Mountains
in the west to the border of the Canadian Shield
in the east. The "joint" of this hinge was believed to be in the area around Edmonton.
Geologists also believed that rocks from the Lower Cretaceous period, formed between 75 and 225 million years ago, was the prime depth for oil to be found. The Leduc area was believed to be an easy location to reach these depths. Earlier discoveries in Texas
and at Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories had shown that oil could be found at the lower Devonian reefs, formed 225 to 600 million years ago. However, the prevailing opinion was that Alberta was a desert at that time and therefore such reefs were unlikely to have been formed. It was not until later that geologists came to realize that much of Alberta was actually a lake during this period, and therefore a prime breeding ground for the organisms that led to the creation of hydrocarbons. At its Norman Wells discovery in the Arctic, Imperial had located a reservoir in the 1920s which eventually became identified as Devonian, and there is an argument that examination of this field helped unlock the geological key to Leduc. Twenty years after the initial discovery at Leduc No. 1, dozens of oil-bearing Devonian reefs had been discovered throughout western Canada.
The discovery of Leduc No. 1 helped unlock the geologic key to Western Canada's oil reserves. The depth at which Leduc No. 1 struck oil was labeled Devonian D-2, commonly called the Nisku Formation, while that which Nos. 2 and 3 reached was Devonian D-3, or the Leduc Formation
. However, it was still many years before they fully understood the nature of the Devonian reefs. In 1949, the majority of wells drilled ran dry; Only 26 of 107 wildcat wells drilled that year became producers of oil or gas.
A second field, called Woodbend, was discovered by Imperial north of the initial find. The two fields were combined to form the Leduc-Woodbend oil field. Within a decade, it was considered the third largest oil field in Canada. Other major discoveries followed Leduc. Imperial discovered a larger northeast of Edmonton near the village of Redwater
in 1948. Gulf Canada
discovered a major strike near Stettler
in the central part of the province in 1950. In 1951, Texaco
made two significant discoveries in the area around Wizard Lake
, immediately south of Leduc-Woodbend. The largest in Alberta, the Pembina oil field
, was discovered in 1953 near the town of Drayton Valley.
The discoveries led to rapidly increasing estimates of Western Canada's reserves. The region was estimated to have 72 million recoverable barrels in 1946. That figure was increased to three billion in 1957. It is currently believed that Western Canada has as much as 77 billion barrels of oil in conventional reserves (i.e.: excluding the Athabasca Oil Sands
), though the vast majority of that total is unrecoverable by current technology.
Drilling activity in the Leduc-Woodbend field peaked in 1951 and exploratory drilling of the field had largely ended by 1955. The field produced 4.7 million barrels of oil in 1948, surpassing total production of Turner Valley within one year. The field peaked at over 20 million barrels annually between 1953 and 1956 before gradually declining. Overall, the Leduc-Woodbend field produced over 250 million barrels in its first 50 years of operation. Leduc No. 1 itself was operational until 1974. During its 27-year lifespan, the well produced 317,000 barrels of oil and over 323 million cubic feet of natural gas.
's total of 833,000. At the 1951 census, Alberta's population had grown to 940,000 while Saskatchewan remained stagnant. The 1951 census also made note of the transformation the province was undergoing, as the urban population outnumbered the rural for the first time in the province's history. Alberta's population grew by another 400,000 throughout the 1950s.
The Government of Alberta attempted to manage growth and hoped to prevent the risk of so-called resource towns from turning into ghost town
s once the oil boom passed them by, as had happened to turn-of-the-century coal mining towns across the province. The planned town
of Devon
, located west of Edmonton, was founded in 1949 by Imperial Oil with the assistance of the province to provide housing and services for workers of the Leduc-Woodbend oil field. Drayton Valley was the province's first model oil town as the government organized the rapid growth the hamlet of less than 100 people experienced beginning in 1954 following the discovery of the nearby Pembina oil field the year previous. Similar communities followed, including Swan Hills
, which incorporated as a town in 1967.
between the cities of Calgary and Edmonton increased following the discovery at Leduc No. 1 as both communities attempted to proclaim themselves the "oil capital of Canada". Edmonton, it was said, would have been only a "quiet administrative centre" if not for the discoveries made in the regions surrounding the city. The city became increasingly blue collar following Leduc as oil workers moved into the city. The city's population rose rapidly; Edmonton's 226,000 residents in 1956 was double that of the census ten years previous, while the city grew by an additional 55,000 by 1961.
Edmonton has become one of the world’s premier operations and service centres for the petroleum industry. It has fabrication and manufacturing capacity that would be the envy of virtually any other oilfield service centre. The University of Alberta
is a jewel in the city’s crown, and it has been a centre of oilsands research since the 1920s.
The area is Alberta’s refining and petrochemical centre – notably the “Industrial Heartland” northeast of Edmonton. That industrial region has grown organically since the late 1940s, when Imperial Oil brought a tin-pot World War II refinery down from Whitehorse
to process crude from Leduc and the other new fields. Now the beneficiary of more than $25 billion in investment, this 582-square-kilometre region hosts 40 large companies and many small ones. Together they operate refineries and petrochemical plants, an upgrader, pipelines, service companies and numerous other interdependent businesses.
However, while many petroleum-related workers and facilities are now located in Edmonton, corporate offices remained in Calgary. Many oil companies had placed their offices in the southern city following the Turner Valley discovery and made no effort to relocate even as drilling and exploration moved north. Consequently, the oil money flowed through Calgary. By 1967, the city had more millionaires than any other in the country, per capita, and more cars per person than any city in the world. Today it is possible to imagine Calgary - which has the planet's greatest concentration of energy-related knowledge in its downtown core - becoming a serious rival to Houston as the energy capital of the world.
Leduc, Alberta
- Demographics :The population of the City of Leduc according to its 2011 municipal census is 24,139, a 3.6% increase over its 2010 municipal census population of 23,293....
, Alberta
Alberta
Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...
, Canada on February 13, 1947. It provided the geological key to Alberta's most prolific conventional oil reserves and resulted in a boom in petroleum
Petroleum
Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...
exploration and development across Western Canada
Western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces and commonly as the West, is a region of Canada that includes the four provinces west of the province of Ontario.- Provinces :...
. The discovery transformed the Alberta economy; oil and gas supplanted farming as the primary industry and resulted in the province becoming one of the richest in the country. Nationally, the discovery allowed Canada to become self-sufficient within a decade and ultimately a major exporter of oil.
The discovery followed years of exploratory failures throughout the province. Imperial Oil
Imperial Oil
Imperial Oil Limited is Canada's largest petroleum company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. It is controlled by US based ExxonMobil, which owns 69.6% of its stock...
had spent millions of dollars drilling 133 dry holes in the previous years as only minor discoveries were made. Leduc No. 1 proved that oil was trapped in what became known as the Leduc Formation
Leduc Formation
Leduc Formation is a stratigraphical unit of Frasnian age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.It takes the name from the city of Leduc, and was first described in B.A. Pyrz No. 1 well in central Alberta by Imperial Oil Limited in 1950. A complete section was cored in Imperial Oil's Leduc No...
and resulted in numerous major discoveries across the prairies. Leduc No. 1 produced 317,000 barrels of oil and 323 million cubic feet of natural gas before it was decommissioned in 1974, and was part of the Leduc-Woodbend oilfield that has produced over 300 million barrels of oil total.
Billions of investment dollars flowed into Alberta and were followed by massive immigration to the province following the discovery. Alberta's two major cities saw their populations double within a few years. Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
grew into a major financial centre and within two decades had the highest number of millionaires in Canada, per capita. The provincial capital of Edmonton
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
, immediately northeast of the discovery, became a major petroleum production centre. A farming community with fewer than 900 residents in 1947, Leduc grew to become Alberta's 13th city, while several towns, including Devon
Devon, Alberta
Devon is a town in the province of Alberta, Canada, situated southwest of Edmonton, the provincial capital, and located along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River.- History :Devon owes its existence to one of the largest oil discoveries in the world...
and Swan Hills
Swan Hills, Alberta
Swan Hills is a town in northern Alberta, Canada. It is located north of Whitecourt at the junction of Highway 32 and Grizzly Trail. Swan Hills is located in Municipal District of Big Lakes within census Division No...
, were founded to support workers in the oil and gas industry.
Leduc No. 1 and the Leduc-Woodbend oil field were designated a National Historic Site in 1990.
Background
Oil was known to exist in Alberta for many centuries. First NationsFirst Nations
First Nations is a term that collectively refers to various Aboriginal peoples in Canada who are neither Inuit nor Métis. There are currently over 630 recognised First Nations governments or bands spread across Canada, roughly half of which are in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia. The...
peoples used it to pitch
Pitch (resin)
Pitch is the name for any of a number of viscoelastic, solid polymers. Pitch can be made from petroleum products or plants. Petroleum-derived pitch is also called bitumen. Pitch produced from plants is also known as resin. Products made from plant resin are also known as rosin.Pitch was...
canoes and to act as a medicinal ointment. Pioneer settlers to southern Alberta in the late 19th century noticed that an oily film occasionally covered pools of water, and that the air had unusual odours at times. In 1911, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
-born settler William Herron identified the nature of the odours from his time working in oil field
Oil field
An oil field is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over a large area, possibly several hundred kilometres across, full exploitation entails multiple wells scattered across the area...
s in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
. He convinced Calgary businessman Archibald Dingman and Member of Parliament
Parliament of Canada
The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa. Formally, the body consists of the Canadian monarch—represented by her governor general—the Senate, and the House of Commons, each element having its own officers and...
R. B. Bennett
R. B. Bennett
Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett, PC, KC was a Canadian lawyer, businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He served as the 11th Prime Minister of Canada from August 7, 1930, to October 23, 1935, during the worst of the Great Depression years...
to visit the site near Turner Valley
Turner Valley, Alberta
Turner Valley is a town in Alberta, Canada. It is located southwest of Calgary.Situated on Highway 22 , the town was once the centre of an oil and natural gas boom. For 30 years, the Turner Valley Oilfields was a major supplier of oil and gas and the largest producer in the British Empire, but is...
. The trio gathered four other investors, formed the Calgary Petroleum Products Company, Ltd. and began developing the region in search of oil. The company drilled three wells beginning in 1913, and on May 14, 1914, the third struck a significant reserve at a depth of 820 metres (2,690.3 ft). Excitement reached a fevered pitch in Calgary once word of the Turner Valley strike reached town. Over 500 oil exploration companies were formed within days, the majority of which existed only to bilk unwitting citizens by selling shares in companies that owned no land and had no intention of drilling for oil.
In actual fact, oil was not discovered initially, but rather naphtha
Naphtha
Naphtha normally refers to a number of different flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons, i.e., a component of natural gas condensate or a distillation product from petroleum, coal tar or peat boiling in a certain range and containing certain hydrocarbons. It is a broad term covering among the...
– a form of natural gas – and Calgary settled into an economic recession that accompanied the outset of the First World War. A second major natural gas discovery brought renewed interest in 1924 when the Royalite No. 4 well blew in in the form of a mammoth fire that burned uncontrolled for nearly a month. This find was made at a depth of 1140 metres (3,740.2 ft). The new discovery resulted in the drilling of hundreds of wells in the region over the next 20 years. The first major crude oil discovery at Turner Valley was made in 1936 at a depth of 2080 metres (6,824.1 ft), the deepest well in Alberta at the time. The Turner Valley oil field reached a peak production of 10 million barrels in 1942, four years after it was recognized as the largest oil field in the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
.
In the 30 years following the initial discovery of 1914, oil companies spent over $150 million on exploration and development but found no major reserves of note. The provincial government resorted to subsidies and tax relief for companies to encourage further exploration. Imperial Oil
Imperial Oil
Imperial Oil Limited is Canada's largest petroleum company. The company is engaged in the exploration, production and sale of crude oil and natural gas. It is controlled by US based ExxonMobil, which owns 69.6% of its stock...
alone had drilled 133 wildcat wells throughout the province, all of which failed to yield significant quantities of oil. By the mid 1940s, the company neared the decision of abandoning the search for oil in the province in favour of focusing on the production synthetic gasoline out of natural gas. While the majority of the company's efforts drilled down only into Cretaceous
Cretaceous
The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...
levels where the Turner Valley strike was discovered, some of Imperial's geologists believed that greater reserves could be found deeper below the earth's surface. They convinced the company's technical committee to attempt one more deep drilling effort. Imperial's board of directors reluctantly supported the new effort, but made it known that this well, initially known as Wildcat No. 134, would be the company's last-chance effort.
Discovery
Imperial's chief geologist, Ted Link, was among those who believed oil could be found at a much greater depth and had already met with success drilling at Norman Wells in the Northwest TerritoriesNorthwest Territories
The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...
. He had his staff determine the best location for the new well. The majority of the team favoured a triangular area that stretched between Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
and Edmonton
Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta and is the province's second-largest city. Edmonton is located on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Capital Region, which is surrounded by the central region of the province.The city and its census...
in central Alberta, up to Grande Prairie
Grande Prairie, Alberta
Grande Prairie is a city in the northwestern part of the province of Alberta in Western Canada. It is located on the southern edge of the Peace River Country . The city is surrounded by the County of Grande Prairie No...
in the northwest. The company then set out to acquire surface lease rights to tracts of land in the region. Imperial acquired rights to over 200,000 acres of land southwest of Edmonton by the end of spring and began surveying the area for the best place to begin drilling. Seismic tests produced two possible candidates: one near the village of Leduc
Leduc, Alberta
- Demographics :The population of the City of Leduc according to its 2011 municipal census is 24,139, a 3.6% increase over its 2010 municipal census population of 23,293....
and another farther to the southwest near Pigeon Lake
Pigeon Lake (Alberta)
Pigeon Lake is a large lake in central Alberta, Canada. It is a popular recreation lake, with some shores having sandy beaches and others having steeper banks that are less suitable to "beach activities". Pigeon Lake is located close to large communities such as Edmonton, Leduc and Wetaskiwin...
. Though the Pigeon Lake spot was viewed by geologists as a more promising location, the team chose Leduc due to the location's proximity to major roadways and the North Saskatchewan River
North Saskatchewan River
The North Saskatchewan River is a glacier-fed river that flows east from the Canadian Rockies to central Saskatchewan. It is one of two major rivers that join to make up the Saskatchewan River....
. This decision proved fortuitous, as a later effort by Imperial to drill at Pigeon Lake resulted in another dry hole.
The farmstead of Mike Turta, 15 km west of Leduc, was chosen as the drilling site. As Turta lacked mineral rights
Mineral rights
- Mineral estate :Ownership of mineral rights is an estate in real property. Technically it is known as a mineral estate and often referred to as mineral rights...
, Imperial initially paid him only $250 per year to lease his land. Imperial brought Vern Hunter, nicknamed "Dry Hole" as a result of of his numerous past failures, to lead the drilling team. Hunter was skeptical that the new site would lead to success. He expected it would fail like previous ventures and that Imperial would then limit its focus to Alberta's natural gas fields. The drilling site was a true wildcat – no other wells drilled within 80 kilometres (49.7 mi) of Turta's farm – and Imperial was willing to go as deep as 2100 metres (6,889.8 ft) in this search.
Drilling of Leduc No. 1 began November 20, 1946. Several drill stem test
Drill Stem Test
A drill stem test is a procedure for isolating and testing the surrounding geological formation through the drill stem. The test is a measurement of pressure behavior at the drill stem and is a valuable way to obtain important sampling information on the formation fluid and to establish the...
s down to depths of 1200 metres (3,937 ft) showed only traces of oil and natural gas. As drilling passed into Mesozoic
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...
depths, tests indicated large quantities of natural gas and some oil. It was a small find, and close to the limits of the Paleozoic Era
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...
, where conventional wisdom of the time held that oil was unlikely to be found. Imperial was left to choose whether to begin production of this small find, or drill deeper and risk having the byproducts of drilling ruin the company's ability to complete a well at the depth of this find. Imperial chose to continue drilling. When drilling reached 1536 metres (5,039.4 ft), into the Devonian Era
Devonian
The Devonian is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic Era spanning from the end of the Silurian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya , to the beginning of the Carboniferous Period, about 359.2 ± 2.5 Mya...
, tests showed promising results. On February 3, 1947, a test sent a geyser shooting out of the drilling hole and up half the height of the drilling derrick, covering a worker with oil.
By this point, Imperial knew they had hit upon a strike. The company pressed Hunter to name a date when the well could come in. He later stated: "The crew and I were experts at abandoning wells but we didn't know much about completing them. I named February 13 and started praying." Imperial invited the public to witness as the well came in. However, the machinery broke down on that morning. The crew worked most of the day trying to fix the machinery, while some of guests began to leave, fearing another disappointment. Shortly before 4 p.m., the crew finally cleared the wellhead and the 500 people who remained despite the bitter cold bore witness Leduc No. 1 came to life. People felt a rumbling in the ground, while roughneck
Roughneck
Roughneck is a slang term for a person whose occupation is hard-manual labour, typically in a dangerous working environment. The term applies across a number of industries, but is most commonly associated with oil rigs...
s opened release valves. The youngest member of the crew was given the honour of "flaring" the well. As the mixture of crude oil and gas spewed from a release pipe, the young man hurled a burning sack onto the mixture, igniting the fuel and sending flames 15 metres (49.2 ft) into the air. Imperial held a party in Edmonton that night in celebration of its achievement.
Geologic breakthrough
The discovery at Leduc was actually a stroke of good fortune, as geologists chose the location on the basis of theories that were later shown to be incorrect. The search for large oil reserves in Alberta had been ongoing for decades because the Western Canadian Sedimentary BasinWestern Canadian Sedimentary Basin
The Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin is a vast sedimentary basin underlying of Western Canada including southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. It consists of a massive wedge of sedimentary rock...
that covered the majority of the prairies
Canadian Prairies
The Canadian Prairies is a region of Canada, specifically in western Canada, which may correspond to several different definitions, natural or political. Notably, the Prairie provinces or simply the Prairies comprise the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, as they are largely covered...
was known to be a prime forming ground for oil. Scientists struggled to understand how such a location could have produced only the two oil fields that were known to exist in 1946. It was believed that the basin under Alberta was shaped like a hinge, extending from the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
in the west to the border of the Canadian Shield
Canadian Shield
The Canadian Shield, also called the Laurentian Plateau, or Bouclier Canadien , is a vast geological shield covered by a thin layer of soil that forms the nucleus of the North American or Laurentia craton. It is an area mostly composed of igneous rock which relates to its long volcanic history...
in the east. The "joint" of this hinge was believed to be in the area around Edmonton.
Geologists also believed that rocks from the Lower Cretaceous period, formed between 75 and 225 million years ago, was the prime depth for oil to be found. The Leduc area was believed to be an easy location to reach these depths. Earlier discoveries in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
and at Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories had shown that oil could be found at the lower Devonian reefs, formed 225 to 600 million years ago. However, the prevailing opinion was that Alberta was a desert at that time and therefore such reefs were unlikely to have been formed. It was not until later that geologists came to realize that much of Alberta was actually a lake during this period, and therefore a prime breeding ground for the organisms that led to the creation of hydrocarbons. At its Norman Wells discovery in the Arctic, Imperial had located a reservoir in the 1920s which eventually became identified as Devonian, and there is an argument that examination of this field helped unlock the geological key to Leduc. Twenty years after the initial discovery at Leduc No. 1, dozens of oil-bearing Devonian reefs had been discovered throughout western Canada.
Leduc-Woodbend oil field
Imperial had already begun testing for a second well, 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) to the southwest of the first. Leduc No. 2 was spudded on February 12, 1947. By May it had reached the depth of No. 1, but revealed little oil. The company worried that Leduc would become only a minor oil field, however a decision was made to continue the search even lower. At a depth of 1640 metres (5,380.6 ft), the well broke through into a reserve even larger than the one Leduc No. 1 discovered. Leduc No. 3 came in on the same day, May 21, 1947, ushering in Alberta's oil boom. Within weeks, over a dozen companies were drilling throughout the region. By the end of 1947, there were 31 operational wells in the area, 24 of them owned by Imperial Oil.The discovery of Leduc No. 1 helped unlock the geologic key to Western Canada's oil reserves. The depth at which Leduc No. 1 struck oil was labeled Devonian D-2, commonly called the Nisku Formation, while that which Nos. 2 and 3 reached was Devonian D-3, or the Leduc Formation
Leduc Formation
Leduc Formation is a stratigraphical unit of Frasnian age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.It takes the name from the city of Leduc, and was first described in B.A. Pyrz No. 1 well in central Alberta by Imperial Oil Limited in 1950. A complete section was cored in Imperial Oil's Leduc No...
. However, it was still many years before they fully understood the nature of the Devonian reefs. In 1949, the majority of wells drilled ran dry; Only 26 of 107 wildcat wells drilled that year became producers of oil or gas.
A second field, called Woodbend, was discovered by Imperial north of the initial find. The two fields were combined to form the Leduc-Woodbend oil field. Within a decade, it was considered the third largest oil field in Canada. Other major discoveries followed Leduc. Imperial discovered a larger northeast of Edmonton near the village of Redwater
Redwater, Alberta
Redwater is a town in northern Alberta, Canada. It is located north of Edmonton on Highway 38, in Sturgeon County. Its population, as of 2006, was 2,192.Redwater is placed in the federal riding of Westlock—St...
in 1948. Gulf Canada
Gulf Oil
Gulf Oil was a major global oil company from the 1900s to the 1980s. The eighth-largest American manufacturing company in 1941 and the ninth-largest in 1979, Gulf Oil was one of the so-called Seven Sisters oil companies...
discovered a major strike near Stettler
Stettler, Alberta
Stettler is a town in Alberta, Canada. It is located east of Red Deer at the junction of Highway 12 and Highway 56. The town is located in the eastern region of central Alberta and nicknamed "The Heart of Alberta."- History :...
in the central part of the province in 1950. In 1951, Texaco
Texaco
Texaco is the name of an American oil retail brand. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owns the Havoline motor oil brand....
made two significant discoveries in the area around Wizard Lake
Wizard Lake
Wizard Lake is a lake in Alberta located south of Calmar. It is a popular recreation spot due to its proximity to Edmonton.- Amenities :Wizard Lake is home to Jubilee Campground which has 100 stalls in total. The lake has recently been refitted on the east shore for a public swimming location.-...
, immediately south of Leduc-Woodbend. The largest in Alberta, the Pembina oil field
Pembina oil field
The Pembina oil field is one of the largest and most prolific conventional oil fields in the province of Alberta, Canada.The mature field is centered around Drayton Valley and is named for the Pembina River, which crosses the region from south-west to north-east.It taps in the Cretaceous deposits...
, was discovered in 1953 near the town of Drayton Valley.
Production
Canada produced only 21,000 barrels of oil per day in 1946, most of it in Turner Valley, but consumed ten times that amount. Alberta's annual total production in 1946 was 7.7 million barrels from 416 wells. Over ninety percent of the nation's oil requirements were imported from the United States. One decade later, Canada was producing sixty-five percent natively, despite a three-fold increase in consumption. Overall production had increased to nearly 144 million barrels from 7,390 productive wells, and Alberta produced 400,000 barrels per day with the capability of doubling that total.The discoveries led to rapidly increasing estimates of Western Canada's reserves. The region was estimated to have 72 million recoverable barrels in 1946. That figure was increased to three billion in 1957. It is currently believed that Western Canada has as much as 77 billion barrels of oil in conventional reserves (i.e.: excluding the Athabasca Oil Sands
Athabasca Oil Sands
The Athabasca oil sands are large deposits of bitumen, or extremely heavy crude oil, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada - roughly centred on the boomtown of Fort McMurray...
), though the vast majority of that total is unrecoverable by current technology.
Drilling activity in the Leduc-Woodbend field peaked in 1951 and exploratory drilling of the field had largely ended by 1955. The field produced 4.7 million barrels of oil in 1948, surpassing total production of Turner Valley within one year. The field peaked at over 20 million barrels annually between 1953 and 1956 before gradually declining. Overall, the Leduc-Woodbend field produced over 250 million barrels in its first 50 years of operation. Leduc No. 1 itself was operational until 1974. During its 27-year lifespan, the well produced 317,000 barrels of oil and over 323 million cubic feet of natural gas.
Population growth
The discovery of Leduc No. 1 led to a rapid population boom in Alberta. The 1948 blowout of the nearby Atlantic No. 3 well aided provincial growth as the derrick collapse and resulting inferno made international headlines and alerted the world to Alberta's oil strikes. Alberta's population in 1946 was 803,000, compared to neighbouring SaskatchewanSaskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....
's total of 833,000. At the 1951 census, Alberta's population had grown to 940,000 while Saskatchewan remained stagnant. The 1951 census also made note of the transformation the province was undergoing, as the urban population outnumbered the rural for the first time in the province's history. Alberta's population grew by another 400,000 throughout the 1950s.
The Government of Alberta attempted to manage growth and hoped to prevent the risk of so-called resource towns from turning into ghost town
Ghost town
A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...
s once the oil boom passed them by, as had happened to turn-of-the-century coal mining towns across the province. The planned town
Planned community
A planned community, or planned city, is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously undeveloped area. This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc fashion. Land use conflicts are less frequent in planned communities since...
of Devon
Devon, Alberta
Devon is a town in the province of Alberta, Canada, situated southwest of Edmonton, the provincial capital, and located along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River.- History :Devon owes its existence to one of the largest oil discoveries in the world...
, located west of Edmonton, was founded in 1949 by Imperial Oil with the assistance of the province to provide housing and services for workers of the Leduc-Woodbend oil field. Drayton Valley was the province's first model oil town as the government organized the rapid growth the hamlet of less than 100 people experienced beginning in 1954 following the discovery of the nearby Pembina oil field the year previous. Similar communities followed, including Swan Hills
Swan Hills, Alberta
Swan Hills is a town in northern Alberta, Canada. It is located north of Whitecourt at the junction of Highway 32 and Grizzly Trail. Swan Hills is located in Municipal District of Big Lakes within census Division No...
, which incorporated as a town in 1967.
Calgary and Edmonton
The already intense rivalryBattle of Alberta
The Battle of Alberta is a term applied to the intense rivalry between the Canadian cities of Edmonton, the capital of the province of Alberta, and Calgary, the province's largest city...
between the cities of Calgary and Edmonton increased following the discovery at Leduc No. 1 as both communities attempted to proclaim themselves the "oil capital of Canada". Edmonton, it was said, would have been only a "quiet administrative centre" if not for the discoveries made in the regions surrounding the city. The city became increasingly blue collar following Leduc as oil workers moved into the city. The city's population rose rapidly; Edmonton's 226,000 residents in 1956 was double that of the census ten years previous, while the city grew by an additional 55,000 by 1961.
Edmonton has become one of the world’s premier operations and service centres for the petroleum industry. It has fabrication and manufacturing capacity that would be the envy of virtually any other oilfield service centre. The University of Alberta
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...
is a jewel in the city’s crown, and it has been a centre of oilsands research since the 1920s.
The area is Alberta’s refining and petrochemical centre – notably the “Industrial Heartland” northeast of Edmonton. That industrial region has grown organically since the late 1940s, when Imperial Oil brought a tin-pot World War II refinery down from Whitehorse
Whitehorse, Yukon
Whitehorse is Yukon's capital and largest city . It was incorporated in 1950 and is located at kilometre 1476 on the Alaska Highway in southern Yukon. Whitehorse's downtown and Riverdale areas occupy both shores of the Yukon River, which originates in British Columbia and meets the Bering Sea in...
to process crude from Leduc and the other new fields. Now the beneficiary of more than $25 billion in investment, this 582-square-kilometre region hosts 40 large companies and many small ones. Together they operate refineries and petrochemical plants, an upgrader, pipelines, service companies and numerous other interdependent businesses.
However, while many petroleum-related workers and facilities are now located in Edmonton, corporate offices remained in Calgary. Many oil companies had placed their offices in the southern city following the Turner Valley discovery and made no effort to relocate even as drilling and exploration moved north. Consequently, the oil money flowed through Calgary. By 1967, the city had more millionaires than any other in the country, per capita, and more cars per person than any city in the world. Today it is possible to imagine Calgary - which has the planet's greatest concentration of energy-related knowledge in its downtown core - becoming a serious rival to Houston as the energy capital of the world.