CANADA JOBS 2018

The Canadian petroleum industry developed in parallel with that one of the United States. The first oil well in Canada was dug by hand (rather than drilled) in 1858 by  near his asphalt plant at , . At a depth of 20 metres (66 ft) he struck oil, one year before "Colonel"  drilled the first oil well in the United StatesWilliams later went on to found "The Canadian Oil Company" which qualified as the world’s first .

Canada's unique , , resources and patterns of settlement have been key factors in the . The development of the  sector helps illustrate how they have helped make the nation quite distinct from the United States. Unlike the United States, which has a number of different major oil producing regions, the vast majority of Canada's petroleum resources are concentrated in the enormous  (WCSB), one of the largest petroleum-containing formations in the world. It underlies 1,400,000 square kilometres

 

isolation, the area was settled relatively late in the history of Canada, and its true resource potential was not discovered until after World War II. As a result, Canada built its major  near its historic  in Ontario and Quebec, rather than its petroleum resources in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Not knowing about its own potential, Canada began to import the vast majority of its petroleum from other countries as it developed into a modern industrial economy.

The province of Alberta lies at the centre of the WCSB and the formation underlies most of the province. The potential of Alberta as an oil-producing province long went unrecognized because it was geologically quite different from American oil producing regions. The  was drilled in southern Alberta in 1902, but did not produce for long and served to mislead geologists about the true nature of Alberta's subsurface geology. The  oil field was 

 

discovered in 1914, and for a time was the biggest oil field in the , but again it misled geologists about the nature of Alberta's geology. In Turner Valley, the mistakes oil companies made led to billions of dollars in damage to the oil field by  which not only burned billions of dollars worth of gas with no immediate market, but destroyed the field's gas drive that enabled the oil to be produced. The gas flares in Turner Valley were visible in the sky from Calgary, 75 km (50 mi) away. As a result of the highly visible wastage, the Alberta government launched vigorous political and legal attacks on the Canadian Government and the oil companies that continued until 1938 when the province set up the Alberta Petroleum and Natural Gas Conservation Board and imposed strict conservation legislation.

 

The status of Canada as an oil importer from the US suddenly changed in 1947 when the  well was drilled a short distance south of Edmonton. Geologists realized that they had completely misunderstood the geology of Alberta, and the highly prolific Leduc oil field, which has since produced over 50,000,000 m³ (310,000,000 bbl) of oil was not a unique formation. There were hundreds more  formations like it underneath Alberta, many of them full of oil. There was no surface indication of their presence, so they had to be found using . The main problem for oil companies became how to sell all the oil they had found rather than buying oil for their refineries. Pipelines were built from Alberta through the Midwestern United States to Ontario and to the west coast of British Columbia. Exports to the U.S. increased dramatically.

Most of the oil companies exploring for oil in Alberta were of U.S. origin, and at its peak in 1973, over 78 per cent of Canadian oil and gas production was under foreign ownership and over 90 per cent of oil and gas production companies were under foreign control, mostly American. This foreign ownership spurred the  under the  government.