The Legacy of Leduc
By Sandra Munnoch
(from Nickle's Petroleum Explorer Quarterly Magazine,
February 1997, Volume 1)
Fifty years after a roaring column of burning oil and gas shot flames 15 metres into the air at Imperial Oil Limited's Leduc No. 1 well, the province of Alberta continues to reap the benefits of an established oil and gas industry and has become a leader in developing and producing natural resources.
"It was really the major event that launched the (Alberta) oil industry," said Dr. George Govier, former head of the provincial Energy Resources Conservation Board, now known as the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board.
Govier worked for the ERCB for 30 years and was chairman of the board between 1962 and 1978. At the time of the Leduc discovery, he was working part time for the Petroleum Natural Gas Conservation Board while completing his graduate work at the University of Alberta.
With the turn of the century just around the comer and Leduc soon to pump its last barrel of oil out of the ground, industry is turning more of its attention to burgeoning oil sands projects in northern Alberta. But the Leduc legacy still reverberates throughout the Canadian oil industry. The field alone contributed more than 300,000 bbls of oil in its lifetime, but, more importantly, its success encouraged geologists and geophysicists to open up other areas of the province.
Alberta is currently producing about two million bbls per day of liquid hydrocarbons, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers' latest figures. This is a far stretch from Leduc's first year, when the province's daily average output was approximately 17,000 bbls of both heavy and light crude.
Noel Cleland, a well known oilpatch veteran and past president of engineering firm Sproule Associates Limited, agreed that Leduc offered more to the province than just oil when it spewed forth its first product from the ground on that cold day in February 1947. "It was a major step forward in the geological knowledge of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin," Cleland said. "It was the type of information you couldn't get from places like Turner Valley."
The Leduc discovery was the first opportunity for geologists and geophysicists to begin probing the Devonian reef, he added, whereas they had previously been concentrating on the Mississippian formations.
Distinguished Alberta oilman David Mitchell, chairman and past president of Alberta Energy Company Ltd., began his career as a summer student working in the Turner Valley area collecting samples for a geologist working for the Rio Bravo Company, which eventually became Mobil Oil Canada.
Although Mitchell was still in university at the time of the Leduc discovery, he remembered the excitement and incredulity about the possibility of producing oil from a coral reef. "Perhaps some geologists had the vision, but for the first time it was evident that good, commercially viable and profitable oil existed in Alberta."
Technological advances have aided geologists and geophysicists in their work and will ultimately push the industry even further forward, he added. "We have a pool of talent in this province. There's a lot of bright people out there. I think one of Alberta's strengths is attracting people who are really at an above average calibre in talent and willingness to use it."
Former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed credited the 1947 discovery with generating resource revenues and the establishment of energyresource driven programs for Albertans.
"I think Leduc significantly impacted the economics of this province because it created the start of the resource revenues," Lougheed told the Explorer. "When we were in office, that amounted to us being able to avoid a sales tax and bring in the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund."
AEC's Mitchell agreed, adding the availability of financial resources gives Alberta an advantage in terms of initiating projects. "They might not have been able to launch the oil sands plants if the government support wasn't available," he said. "If you can afford to have a good infrastructure and the financing is there, you can do things better."
The ex-premier's brother, Don Lougheed, a former Imperial executive vicepresident and a student in the 1940s, remembered driving to the field with some friends shortly after it began producing. "One of our friends had access to a car I don't actually remember how he got it, but we drove up there ... this was big news!" he said.
The discovery of Leduc meant employment opportunities were now available in the province and Lougheed was able to begin his career working for Imperial shortly after he graduated from the University of Alberta. "The Leduc discovery meant that they were hiring people and I just happened to be one of the ones who was hired," he said.
No one really had any idea of the significant impact Leduc would have on the province of Alberta, Lougheed said. "I still remember a geology professor at the time saying that Leduc will turn to salt water within a month our professor wasn't very optimistic."
The former oil executive also said that his quality of life turned out to be quite good, thanks to the Leduc discovery. "I got a job after Leduc and ended up with a good career, but if the oilpatch hadn't boomed, I don't know what life would have been like," he said. "Life turned out to be good because of it, but you wouldn't have known that at the time."
Imperial's Leduc discovery also jumpstarted the pipeline industry in Alberta by impelling the company to build a crude oil pipeline from the famous field to a refining facility in Regina, Saskatchewan.
"Everyone was rushing around it was a very exciting time," said Fred Newton, an accountant with Interprovincial Pipe Line Company in 1949 and later assistant treasurer. "Alberta was an expanding, young province with everyone so optimistic about its future."
With two major discoveries under its belt Leduc and subsequently Redwater in 1948 Imperial management decided to add an additional leg to the pipeline to take it from Regina to Superior, Wisconsin.
Once it reached Superior, large tankers transported the oil to Sarnia, Ontario.
"No one had any idea how big the Leduc discovery was going to be," Newton said. "I spent all my time at the office (in 1949) trying to get things organized. There was a lot of paper flying around because no one knew anything about building a pipeline."
One of IPL:s biggest hurdles during this time was convincing then federal minister of trade and commerce C.D. Howe that it was more advantageous to go south through the United States rather than north through the more treacherous lakes and muskeg areas of Ontario.
Howe, who at the time represented the Ontario lakehead community of Port Arthur (now known as Thunder Bay), agreed to the U.S. route, saving IPL approximately 120 extra miles of pipeline and reducing the initial construction price tag.
IPL's original line from Edmonton to Superior was completed in 1950 at a recordsetting pace, taking only 151 days to lay the entire stretch of pipe, and employing some 1,500 people. "Our first president, Lome Kahle, was the driving force behind the pipeline. He did a magnificent job," Newton said.
Kahle was imported from The Standard Oil Company in New Jersey to start the pipeline, Newton said. "He was told to get the pipeline up and running within a year and he did."
Companies such as Red Deerbased Waschuk Pipeline Construction Ltd. exemplify the trickledown effect Leduc had on service and supply companies. President Bill Waschuk started up his pipeline company shortly after the discovery, and it has since blossomed into a prominent Western Canadian company employing at times upwards of 800 people.
"In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were very few Canadians that could lay pipe so it was mostly Americans that came up from the States," Waschuk said. However, the reverse is now true and Canadians are the leading pipeline experts.
LEGACY: Something handed down from the past
By Aubrey Kerr
Dr. T. A. (Ted) Link was chief geologist of Imperial Oil Limited and he pointed the way to an understanding of the unknown subsurface which he said would only be gained by drilling a series of deep tests in Western Canada. The second of these would be Leduc.
Dr. Carl Heiland was a pioneer geophysicist. He was asked in 1928 to set up a geophysical program at the Colorado School of Mines. Equally important, Heiland diversified by creating Heiland Research Corporation to develop seismograph instruments which would fathom the depths of the sedimentary basin.
Despite abysmal gloom in 1946, Link galvanized his 32 geologists into action by asking them (not telling them) where the company should be looking. This small group of earth scientists, headed by Jack Webb, responded by bending their efforts despite only fragmentary knowledge of the subsurface.
Heiland's tutorial ability at Colorado bore fruit in many minds, but few graduates were so gifted as Ray Walters. He had been sent up from Carter Research in this he noted a vague anomaly west of Leduc town which had been recorded by a Carter crew headed by Frank Roberts early in the spring of 1946.
Never content with vague information, Ray pursued this anomaly in the summer of 1946 by hiring a Heiland seismic crew headed up by Jim Ziegler. Ziegler's job was to shoot detailed continuous seismic profiles. This field work yielded a welldefined "high" in the centre of 5026 W4M, but no one knew what it meant geologically.
Hank Kunst, the sole Imperial geologist attached to Walters, coauthored a report recommending drilling this mystery feature. Thus, the two disciplines coalesced to drill into a hitherto unexpected and unknown horizon the Devonian reef (which came in on Feb. 13, 1947). The anomaly was due to reef growth which had created "draping" of shallower beds. The mystery had been solved.
This Leduc find would be the first in a long series of discoveries, a lasting legacy to Link's leadership, Hieland's teaching and his state-of-the-art seismograph equipment.
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