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Canada’s Oil Boom
BY LARRY ROGERS
(from a recent Canadian Chronicle broadcast)
Western Canada is having an oil boom
these days, and it could not have happened
at a better time. Like most other countries
today, Canada is experiencing a shortage of
United States dollars. Up to the time of the
federal government’s austerity announce-
ment on November 18th, Canada budgeted
for the spending of some billion dollars on
United States imports—two hundred mil-
lions of this for American crude oil.
Determined to cut down this outflow of United States dollars, the govern-
ment is looking hopefully to four oil fields in Western Canada, whose flow of
“black gold” may eventually make Canada independent of oil imports. The
four fields, whose output may make Canada the biggest oil-producing country
in the British Commonwealth within a few years, are located on the western
prairies in a zone 1,000 miles long and 200 miles wide running parallel to the
Rocky Mountains.
The largest and oldest of the fields is at Turner Valley near Calgary in
Alberta. It has produced more than a hundred million barrels of oil in its
33-year history. Turner Valley is still pouring out approximately six million
barrels a year, even though its output has been declining slowly over the last
few years.
The most important new field is the Leduc structure, also in Alberta and
located within a few miles of the capital city of Edmonton. Discovered early
in 1947, Leduc already looks as though it will be another Turner Valley.
Drilling so far has outlined reserves of fifty million barrels. Production was
expected to reach the rate of one million barrels a year by the end of 1947.
Many observers believe that Leduc will be rivalling Turner Valley’s output
by the end of 1948.
Canada’s third oil field is centred on Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. It
spreads over a huge 400-square-mile area in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Discovered in the late thirties, its development was slow until 1946. But
it has expanded rapidly since then and is now producing at the rate of
approximately one million barrels a year. The fourth field lies far to the
north of these three, at Norman Wells on the Mackenzie River near the
Arctic Circle. It supplied the famous Canol pipeline during the last years of
the war but has been shut down since mid-1945. Its proven reserves of thirty
million barrels and its potential of three million barrels a year may be called
into action again soon if transportation difficulties can be solved. The
extension of a rail-river system to reach this field would be costly, but the
outlay might be justified by the saving of American dollars that would result.
Apart from these four fields there are a number of prospective oil areas
now being tested in Canada’s western provinces by large oil companies.
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