URGENTLY WANTED TO CANADA

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 (540,000 sq mi) of  including most or part of four western provinces and one northern territory. Consisting of a massive wedge of  up to 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) thick extending from the  in the west to the  in the east, it is far distant from Canada's  and well as its . It is also far from . Because of its geographic 

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. 

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