Development History

Alberta hasn’t always been a huge oil- and gas-producing province. In fact, up until the mid-20th century, Canada imported almost 90 per cent of its oil and gas and Alberta was but a minor player.

Natural gas

A Canadian Pacific Railway crew made Alberta’s first natural gas discovery by accident in 1883 while drilling for water in Medicine Hat. This strike led to more wells being drilled in the area in the 1890s, which produced gas for use in the region’s homes and factories.

In 1908, a large natural gas discovery dubbed “Old Glory” was made near Bow Island, and by 1912 the province’s first pipeline stretched 270 kilometres from Bow Island to Calgary. These events prompted a number of Albertans to switch from coal to natural gas for household heating.

Three major natural gas discoveries in the Turner Valley area (one in 1914, another in 1924, and the last in 1936) firmly established Alberta as gas-producing province.

As gas discoveries mounted, the government formed the Alberta Petroleum and Gas Conservation Board (predecessor of the EUB) in 1938 due to concern that without proper regulations, Alberta’s hydrocarbon wealth could be squandered.

Throughout the 1940s the numbers, depths, and productivity of gas wells increased as extraction technology improved, and by 1952 industry constructed the first gas pipeline to export natural gas into the United States, crossing the border into Montana.

Five years later the Alberta Gas Trunk Line Company Limited, which eventually became NOVA Gas Transmission, was created to construct a province-wide natural gas transportation system. In 1958, construction of the TransCanada PipeLine system was completed, allowing Alberta gas to be shipped directly to consumers in eastern Canada.

The discovery and production of conventional natural gas reserves in Alberta grew steadily throughout the latter half of the 20th century. As output began showing signs of slowing in recent years, producers started to look at alternative resources, such as coalbed methane (CBM).

Crude oil

Canada imported most of its oil in the early part of the 1900s.

The fist recorded oil find in Alberta was the Dingman #1 well near Turner Valley in 1914. Although it was a minor discovery and only managed to supply petroleum for the immediate region, it sparked an oil boom that lured the Canada’s oil exploration industry west from Ontario.

Oil discoveries were few and far between until 1947, when Imperial Oil, after drilling 133 dry holes, hit a gusher with the Leduc No. 1 well. This event led to a series of major oil discoveries in the region and touched off a boom that established Alberta as the centre of the Canadian oil industry. The Leduc wells from that period were so prolific that they produced oil into the 1990s.

Following the Leduc discovery, oil companies cast their net across Alberta and throughout the WCSB, making significant oil discoveries in the Swan Hills, Redwater, and West Pembina areas of the province, to name but a few.

Meanwhile, commercial development of Alberta’s vast oil sands began in earnest in 1967, when the Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor) began extracting bitumen from an open-pit mine north of Fort McMurray to upgrade into synthetic crude oil.

In 1978, Syncrude inaugurated the world’s largest bitumen mining operation.