No Oil In Alberta, Eh?

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Walters first exercised his independent thinking by hiring a Heiland Exploration³ crew, under party chief Jim Ziegler, to confirm a reconnaissance anomaly in Township 50, Range 26, previously shot by Frank Roberts and crew early in 1946. Confirmation of the anomaly⁴ set the wheels in motion to have it tested. The rest is history. Imperial Leduc No. 1 was spudded on November 20th, yielded crude on a drillstem test on February 3, and officially went on production February 13,1947. But it was a modest prelude to the follow-up well, Imperial Leduc No.2. Just one and a quarter miles southwest of No.1, this porous Lower Devonian main reef, later to be designated D-3 and still later Leduc, yielded up a black treasure on May 7, 1947, that flowed to the surface in seven minutes - catapulting Alberta into the world of oil!

Little did Imperial realize that yet another chapter in the history of oil in Alberta had already started to unfold. W. N. (Wes) Rabey, Imperial Oil interpreter, who was on the Frank Roberts' reflection seismic crew that initially identified the Leduc anomaly in 1946, recalls the same crew extending their shooting eastward from Leduc and finding yet another anomaly. According to Rabey, it was a very large, prominent and relatively deep structure. However, his interpretation was rejected by the Calgary office, although he presented it several times - it was at odds with their deep structure theories. "How could there be such a thing on the prairies?" The "thing" was, of course, a reef, but they didn't know it then, and neither did anyone else for that matter. Rabey even went so far as to say that there was some attempt to get him to change his maps to correspond to theirs. The story of "Hell no, you can't go" bears repeating when referring to a Carter geologist refusing permission for one of his hands to attend a conference on reefs, stating "Whoever heard of finding oil in a reef?"

Rabey became even more determined to investigate this anomaly further and chose an opportune time, when Frank Roberts was on vacation, to ask the party operator, Bob Grier, how long it would take to re-wire the truck for continuous profiling. "Just a few hours" was Bob's reply. Within a short time, they had shot two miles of continuous profile over what would later be recognized as the east edge of the Redwater reef. The result was astounding - 40 milliseconds of relief! There was, indeed, a large structure - Rabey had proven the Calgary office wrong!

When Roberts returned from his holiday, and Rabey disclosed his "unsanctioned" work, he exploded⁵ "You'll get me fired!" The tempest in the teapot soon blew over and, in September 1946, Rabey was transferred to Calgary to do interpretation on several parties' records, in all likelihood because he had "seen" Redwater. He was so enthused about the anomaly that he kept bugging Ray Walters, and others, to file on the land, even threatening to "quit and file on it myself" if they didn't.

Two otherwise unsung groups of doodlebugs played their part in the seismic scramble before Redwater was discovered. Walters, not convinced that it was a deep structure, hired two Heiland crews to do detailed shooting over the feature.

Their task was not an easy one. Road allowances were marked by sharp vee ditches on each side and they were nothing more than trails, many of them not broken out. Swamp areas were covered by 10-ft stringers under which trees had been lain parallel to the road. Trucks had to be winched through a lot of this territory, and the roadways were badly torn up. "It didn't seem muddy enough to stop." This was the cry of the party chiefs when they were being bugged for speeded-up productions - so many days, so many hours. The sand hills were equally formidable. Not only did the crews need to deflate vehicle tires to avoid getting stuck, but records were very poor due to energy absorption. Where it was necessary to enter the farmer's land, off the road allowance, Jim Barron recalls stuccoed mud huts with dirt floors and the occupants being unable to converse in English. They would use their children, who had picked up some English at school, as interpreters. He also remembers some of the shot holes producing artesian water, and yet the municipal authorities didn't bring them to task until the roads were in an advanced state of disrepair.

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