Nickle's History

The Daily Oil Bulletin Story: A Man, His Dream, And $62

Just over 50 years ago, on October 1, 1937, a young Calgary radio reporter took a $62 investment and the goodwill of a local printer and hit the streets the next day with a one-page, single-spaced, typewritten journal dedicated to the infant Canadian oil and gas industry.

A month later, Carl Nickle mated his daily publication - still only a page, maybe two on a busy day - with a weekly Oil Bulletin that provided a summary of developments for those "who may be interested in keeping tabs on the industry for six dollars a year."

Before launching the Bulletin, Nickle had been a full-time reporter with CFCN Radio in Calgary, where he made his mark - and earned a reprimand from the station manager - by being the first Western Canadian to report on the love affair between the Duke of Windsor (soon to become King Edward II) and American divorcee Wallace Simpson.

"Although (the affair) had been reported in the United States, none of the media touched it up here because of our closer ties with the monarchy," Nickle said in an interview.

The reprimand eventually led to a switch in reporting assignments from watching the Royal Family to covering the oil industry, which at the time consisted of about 25 rigs drilling at Turner Valley and 10 at Lloydminster.

Along with his radio duties, Nickle reported on the Western Canadian oil industry for the Calgary Herald and the Toronto-based Financial Post.

In fact, his extra-curricular writing activities - "got to the point where I was making more money writing oil news than I was making at the station" - and the demand for oil news got so intense, that Nickle realized a market existed for a specific publication directed solely at reporting on the industry's activities.

At the time, the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in Canada was centred in the year-old Turner Valley field southwest of Calgary. Production in 1937 averaged about 20,000 barrels per day.

Scattered exploratory tests were being punched down by cable-tool rigs at sites that would soon become hallmarks of the Alberta industry: Taber in the south; Pouce Coupe, Peace River and "The Athabaska Tar Sands" in the north.

But in 1937, the Canadian oil industry was Turner Valley, and the industry's health - including the health of the Bulletin - crested and fell with the tides of Turner Valley.

For a time, Nickle was the Bulletin's publisher, editor, reporter, salesman - for his efforts, he drew a $90 salary each month. He covered Turner Valley by Model T Ford, driving out a few times a week to check on the latest activity.

In 1938, Bill Crutcher, a work partner with Nickle on depression-era highway relief projects, joined the staff as the first reporter employee (but the relationship between the two was hardly that of an employee-employer, as Nickle was to relate nearly 5 years later).

"He made $70 a month. Later on he took a wife and, since he was the first one of us to get married, he took the $90 month and I took the $70."

With a relatively young industry, gathering the news - and the rumors - of the day wasn't difficult.

A popular gathering place for scouts, landmen and geologists was Liggett's Drugstore, on the ground floor of the old Lancaster Building (corner of 8 Ave. & 2 St. SW), which also housed most of the majors and the Bulletin offices.

"Coffee was a ritual enjoyed by pretty well everyone in the oil industry. There were no secrets at that time - everyone was free to talk about their company's operations and they did."

Over the next decade, the Bulletin struggled along, surviving month to month on a meagre subscription base that began at about 14 - a couple Calgary newspapers and a handful of oil companies - and never strayed very far from that number.

Then, in February 1947, Imperial Oil Limited brought in Leduc No. 1 an event which, as Nickle wrote 10 years later on the occasion of the Bulletin's 20th anniversary, "blew the lid off" the industry.

Imperial had launched operations in Alberta after the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the forerunner to today's New Democratic Party, won its first Saskatchewan election in the mid-1940s, and prior to 1947, had spent a couple of years working itself westwards from the Saskatchewan border, working one prospect after another, with little to show for its efforts.

But with Leduc came the payoff, and soon other major American firms began looking at prospects in Western Canada.

Interestingly enough, the Shell Group of companies could just as easily have been the discoverer of Leduc, but for what Nickle now says "was probably the worst move in the history of the Canadian oil patch."

Hard hit by the war and its aftermath in Europe and the Far East, Shell decided to concentrate its exploration dollars in areas where large oil reserves were more likely to be found - its Alberta activities were included in the cuts.

And among the deals dropped were agreements covering extensive freehold rights in areas around Edmonton - Leduc to the south and Redwater to the northeast - areas which subsequently contributed significantly to Alberta crude oil production.

"Shell would likely have been in much the same position as Imperial today if it had been alert and hadn't pulled out - but then the ndustry is rife with stories like that," Nickle says.

By the time the dust had settled on the Leduc discovery, and the play had matured, the Calgary oilpatch had exploded to 300 or so active players, Nickle says, against "just 20 or so before."

It "blew the lid off" the Bulletin, as well, Nickle recalls.

"For the first 10 years the Bulletin was in business it was largely a case of existing and getting by a little," he says. "But after the Leduc discovery, we found we had developed such a good relationship with the govemment agencies, like the Conservation board, that they would recommend us to companies coming into the province, and we began to grow rapidly."

A year later, perhaps burdened by the significant increase in Western Canada brought on by Leduc, Nickle sold the weekly Bulletin to Stovel Advocate Publishing of Winnipeg, which in turn transformed the publication into Oil in Canada.

"I sold the weekly ... mainly because it was a rehash of the daily, and, frankly, the weekly was not doing so well," Nickle says.

In the 40 years since, the DOB has continued to grow, and now counts as its subscribers oil companies, banks, investment houses and government officials in Canada, the United States and Europe.

Larry Frantz witnessed the early days of that explosive post Leduc growth, joining the Bulletin on May 1, 1947 and staying on for years, eventually taking over day-to-day editor duties when Nickle was first elected to Parliament in 1951.

Abandoning - "without too much persuasion" - a career in dentistry, Frantz had come to Calgary in the spring of 1947 to attend his sister's wedding, and landed what started out as "just a job for the summer" with the Bulletin.

Nickle was again on his own as editor/reporter/writer for the newsletter, and Frantz was hired on the spot after a brief typing exam.

From then, it was full into the breech for Frantz and his "baptism by fire" in the oil and gas industry instilled in him an awe that led to an eventual position as president of an exploration company in the late 50s.

The business of gathering, writing and disseminating the Bulletin then was a far cry from today's computerized operation stories were often the result of tips gathered from conversations over coffee with oil scouts, and confirmed or denied with a quick trip to the president's office.

"In those days, the industry in Calgary was still relatively small, we knew most executives by name and the exchange of information was a much more give and take situation than it is today," he says.

"Most times, our tips would come from scouts who had originally come to us looking for information on what the other guy was doing."

Apart from its function as a first-account source of information vital to the industry, the Bulletin also served as a conduit for job hopefuls.

The first place a budding roughneck would check-in, even before locating a place to sleep, was at the Bulletin, and more times than not, Nickle or Frantz would steer them in the right direction -- who was hiring, who was not, who was good to work for, who was a "flyby-night" and doubtful to be around in a month or two.

That "ad-hoc" employment agency function, Frantz said, would later pay handsome dividends -- years later, important contacts would be cultivated amongst executives and district managers who had been sent along to new jobs on the strength of Bulletin Ups.

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An unabashed booster of the Canadian industry, Nickle brought to the pages of the Bulletin in the 40s, 50s and 60s a unique editorial style - a reflection not only of his political convictions but also of his dedication to community endeavours.

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During World War II, he promoted the purchase by his subscribers of Victory Bonds, and was the subject of U.S. government and military censorship during the construction of the trans-Alaskan Canol pipeline in 1943 - an event which was unknown even to U.S. Presidential advisor Harry Hopkins until he read about it in the pages of the Daily Oil Bulletin.

The Canol pipeline was being built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from the Norman Wells oilfield to a refinery in Whitehorse in order to keep Alaska supplied with oil for the U.S. Navy.

But the project was top secret, Nickle says, because of the potential for Japanese invasion.

"I had heard that the pipe had been landed for the project in Edmonton and was destined for Fort Norman and I wrote about it," he says.

At the time, the U.S. Army was a DOB subscriber, and the first news many in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration heard of the project was what they read in the Bulletin --although Nickle himself didn't consider the project very secret at all.

"You can't keep the landing of that much pipe a secret and the Japanese probably knew all about the project already, but the FBI contacted the Canadian authorities and I was rapped by the RCMP", who had been instructed to "stop the leakage in Canada" concerning the top secret project.

Throughout the war years, Nickle exorted his readers to "not grumble" about emergency gasoline rations, and leant his full support to the federal government's "oil controller", the de-facto head of the war-time Canadian petroleum industry, with wide ranging powers governing the exploration, development, production, refining and marketing of Canadian crude oil.

And on May 7, 1945 he joined the world in celebrating V-E Day. It was "the climax of 2,319 days of the costliest warfare in the world's history - the preliminary to an inevitable peace in the Pacific - the bloody foundation for what the world hopes will be a firm and lasting Peace, a day of Thanksgiving, a day of Remembrance for the millions from all the United Nations who gave all to make V-E possible," he wrote in that day's edition of the Bulletin.

To allow all to "give expression to the joy" occasioned by the end of the war in Europe, Bulletin offices were closed that afternoon, and remained closed through the next day.

When the war broke out, Nickle was drafted and joined the Second Batallion of the Calgary Highlanders, but the federal government - for reasons still unknown - had declared the Bulletin an essential service and Nickle was exempted from combat service. His military obligations still stood, however - Army work occupied his days and DOB work, his evenings.

In the post-war years, Nickle turned increasingly towards fulfilling his interest in politics, first by editorial calls for less government interference in the oil and gas industries and later taking that fight and others directly to Parliament, earning a federal seat in a 1951 by-election as Conservative MP for Calgary West.

Nickle's win - by 4,306 votes was the biggest Conservative landslide in the constituency since former prime minister R.B. Bennett held the seat.

In a supplement to the Bulletin published on July 28, 1951, Nickle outlined his desire to reverse "an unhealthy trend toward too much government by Cabinet directive and not enough control of national affairs by Parliament."

"But the main reason I ran for office was that no one in Parliament knew the oil industry at that time," he says. "If producers found oil, fine; if they found gas they shut it in because there just wasn't any market. Shell waited 14 years to develop Jumping Pound; Cal-Standard (now Chevron Canada) waited 18 years to market gas from its Princess field."

He won election that fall, and in the general election of 1953 was returned again to Ottawa, this time representing the Calgary South constituency.

With his election to public office, Nickle removed himself from day-to-day operations at the Bulletin and turned the publication over to Frantz, as co-editor.

"At no time did Carl ever try to use his position as publisher to influence events in Ottawa, nor did he ever use his position as a Member of Parliament to influence the pages of the Bulletin," Frantz says. In major articles written by Nickle and dealing with political issues of the day were bylined "Carl O. Nickle, MP", and when he himself took the opportunity to address the media, it was, more often than not, as "a private citizen of Alberta," and not as either Bulletin publisher or MP.

One of the most intense battles fought by Nickle, as both a citizen of Alberta and as publisher of the DOB, was for development of a comprehensive provincial policy dealing with the export potential of Alberta natural gas.

In April 1952, the Conservation Board and the Alberta government "advocated and approved" the export of natural gas from the Peace River region of the province as soon as possible.

Although the move was "a step in the right direction", the board's recommendation, and its subsequent approval by the government, completely ignored the massive gas surplus available in Gulf's Pincher Creek field, south of Calgary.

A single approval of exports, Nickle said, is not enough, "when what is needed is a bold, progressive policy on natural gas, boldly executed."

At the same time, Nickle fought for, and eventually witnessed, the development of a natural gas pipeline network linking the producing and untapped reserves of Alberta with gas markets in Eastern Canada and the United States Midwest and Pacific Northwest.

Still later, after leaving federal politics in 1958 and becoming active in the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, he championed the development of a national oil policy - such a policy was implemented in the early 60s, reserving all markets west of the Ottawa valley for Western Canadian crude oil.

In 1950, he reported on the completion of the $90 million Interprovincial Pipe Line system, which originally carried crude oil from Edmonton to the Lakehead in western Ontario and slashed crude oil transportation costs to Eastern Canada by about $2.20 a barrel. Later, the line was extended through the United States and into Canada again at Sarnia, where it supported a still-youthful petrochemical and petroleum product refining industry. Although Nickle's day-to-day activities in the mid-1950s were focused primarily on the developing Canadian oil and gas industry, both as politician, publisher and explorer, he also took an abiding interest in community affairs and the education of Calgary youth.

To further these goals, he established in 1956 the Nickle Foundation, and gifted it with a substantial interest in his business empire. Disbursements from the Foundation were intended to "assist in the educational, cultural, moral, religious and physical development of the youth of Southern Alberta."

At the same time, he consolidated his family's various business enterprises, including C.O. Nickle Publications Ltd., into a privately-owned company, Conick Petroleums Ltd.

A year later - on the 20th anniversary of the DOB - 50% of the Conick capital stock was gifted to the Foundation. For the next number of years, until Conick began paying dividends, 10% or more of the net income of C.O. Nickle Publications, the Daily Oil Bulletin, the Canadian Oil Register, and the Nickle family was gifted to the organization.

Over the past 30 years, the Nickle Foundation has awarded a variety of scholarships to students in Calgary high schools, Mount Royal College, the University of Calgary, the University of Alberta, the Banff School of Fine Arts and to Southern Alberta Honors French students to attend surnmer French school at Laval University in Quebec.

As well, the Foundation donated the Nickle family's extensive collection of ancient Canadian and British coinage to the Glenbow Museum and made a donation to the University of Calgary - which recognized the Nickle family's philanthropic endeavors by building the Nickle Arts Museum on the university campus.

Over the next eight years, Nickle expanded his community and business activities, serving as president of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in 1962. As well, he was president of the Calgary Philharmonic Society and the Calgary Petroleum Club, a director of both the Canadian Petroleum Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of Canada and chairman of the Calgary Allied Arts Foundation.

Finally, to "ensure that the Bulletin would remain Canadian-owned," Nickle sold 50% of C.O. Nickle Publications to Southam Business Publications in 1965, retaining his position as publisher and continuing his community activities.

Although Southam had been looking for a position in the upstream energy industry publications market for about two years - ever since competitor Maclean Hunter Publishing had acquired the weekly Oilweek and Oil in Canada in 1963 - no one at the Toronto-based company was entirely aware of the tradition it had bought into.

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"I know that nobody at Southam really knew what they were acquiring when they acquired it, nor did anybody have a sense of the true value of the Bulletin to the industry," says Ward Brandow, former vice-president/west of Southam Communications Limited.

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It was during this period that Nickle sought to broaden the profile of the Canadian oil industry to the Canadian public, and with the help of his old employer, launched a weekly television broadcast - the CFCN Oil Report - in 1967.

"We began the broadcast originally as a means of providing a summary of principal developments of the industry for the benefit of oil people and their families," Nickle recalled during an interview for the Glenbow Museum's Oral History Project.

Soon, however, it became clear that the broadcast's audience was much wider than industry people alone, and the format was adjusted to fulfill an educational role, dealing in layman's terms with industry activities and how they affected the general public.

The final oil report was broadcast on Feb. 8, 1975 and perhaps fittingly, dealt with the newly-approved $2-billion Syncrude Canada Ltd. project. The first oil report, on Oct. 7, 1967, reported on the opening of the $235 million Great Canadian Oil Sands project.

By the time the final oil report was broadcast, Nickle had relinquished all day-to-day control over the Daily Oil Bulletin, having retired as publisher three years previously, on the 35th anniversary of the publication. Earlier in 1972, he had sold his remaining 50% of C.O. Nickle Publications to Southam.

But he kept his hand in the DOB, serving as Editor Emeritus of the publication and contributing guest editorials on national and international energy industry developments.

In the 15 years since Nickle ceased his active association with the Daily Oil Bulletin, the trade publication has continued to grow, always seeking new ways to serve its readers and the oil and gas industry.

Extensive research in the late 70s also led to a slight shift in the DOB's focus - although the daily updates on active wells in Western Canada were retained, a new direction towards more editorial content was adopted.

However, subjective comments on the developments in the industry won't be found in the pages of today's Bulletin - a reflection of the current management's philosophy that the DOB reader is sufficiently equipped to make his own judgments on industry happenings.

"Today's reader wants to pick the Bulletin up and know that what he is reading are the facts - that if he is reading about what somebody said it really is what that person said and not what a writer thinks that person said," Brandow adds.

One of the most significant advances - at least in terms of how the Bulletin is put together every day - was a decision in 1980 to enter, in a tentative way, the automation age.

"We had reached the stage where we were drowning in a sea of wells we were having a very difficult time keeping up, and if we hadn't gone to an electronic form of producing the drilling report I'm not sure what we would have done," Brandow says of the decision to embrace automated production methods.

The move to electronics was a bold step for its day - desktop personal computers were still in their infancy, and fitting the Bulletin's extensive base of data and information into a single system was nearly impossible, given the available technology.

However, "we jumped in with both feet," Brandow says, and the dedication to electronics continues today, with moves by the Bulletin to offer electronic delivery of the publication directly into subscribers' computer systems.

As well, a new generation of PC based software has opened the doors to producing a "hardcopy DOB" entirely using computer programs and laser printing. (Editor's note: In the new millennium, that vision is being extended to the World Wide Web.)

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"We really have made a commitment to be on the leading edge of technology in terms of data gathering and distribution, and this commitment will be reflected in some of the things we'll be doing in the future," Brandow adds.

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Well information - since the beginning the staple of the Bulletin's data collection efforts - is now being stored on a mainframe computer database, providing for more efficient retrieval and custom report generation.

Similar efforts are underway to computerize the Bulletin's Rig Locator database, the Bulletin's land sale database and a newly-developed corporate database.

When all components of the new system are in place, Bulletin staff will be able to quickly correlate particular land sale information with recent drilling and licensing activity, active operators in the area and the location of currently available rig contractors.

Although the new system will bring the Daily Oil Bulletin fully into the electronic age, any amount of modernization won't detract from founder Carl Nickle's original aim to keep industry subscribers abreast of developments in Alberta, Canada and around the world, Brandow says.

"It's been an interesting 50 years - I think we have done an admirable job of fulfilling our role which has been as the eyes and ears of the business and I think we are now positioned to continue that, hopefully in the same innovative way that was represented in the past 50 years."

Carl O. On The Great Pipeline Debate

"My most vivid memory is probably the great pipeline debate ... when industry was pushing for a cross-Canada transmission system to open markets in Eastern Canada for their shut-in gas," Nickle says.

But unlike other politicians, Nickle adamantly rejected an all-Canadian route crossing the vast expanse of Manitoba east of Winnipeg and the wilds of Northern Ontario, he said, would have unnecessarily boosted the cost of the project and missed potential markets by hundreds of miles.

A more feasible route would be to take the line south from Winnipeg in the U.S. Midwest -- America's industrial heartland with substantial new market potential.

"I supported the pipeline until it turned into a political issue and I ended up turning against it -- I voted against my party when the all-Canadian route was discussed."

Photo courtesy Public Archives of Canada, Imperial Oil Collection

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