Cinderella Rig (Page 2)

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Ernie Kennedy describes the rig and the blowout preventer. ''It was so low to the ground, you couldn't get anything for BOP's under it worth a dime. It was an old thing...all it done was clamp around the pipe....didn't have blind rams on it. For a blind ram, what we had was an old Hughes 10 inch gate valve. So, if we thought of it before it blew in, we'd go down the cellar and close that old valve. But nobody was gonna go in there and close that valve afterwards - that was for damn sure! We tried to close it on time, just for fun, while it was on the ground - put pipe wrenches and snipes on, and you couldn't turn it. It was all rusted to hell. I think there was a little bleed-off line run out there...just down to the end of the sump. Fortunately, we never had to use that...very, very fortunate."

Progress was pitifully slow. The Lower Cretaceous gas sand was water-bearing (so much for Weeks who had dreamt about a hinge belt sand!). The D-2 equivalent was not reached until April 27. From here on in there was nothing but bad news. This was confirmed by the four D-2 drill stem tests, only one of which yielded 20 feet of gassy oil with a small blow of gas. By the time they had reached 5,212 feet, it was decided to string eight lines instead of the six over the crown block, thus improving the mechanical advantage but increasing the time that it took to make trips. Art Greene recalls the great compressional forces the rig mast was now being subjected to, ''We all knew what we could do." It was at this juncture, decisions had to be made: Move the rig to drill a direct offset to No. 1 or carry on until the rig's capacity was reached. Did Calgary office realize that the Franks No. 3 had already passed its limit?

Bit No. 39, a Hughes W7R got on bottom at 6:15 p.m., May 6. The author had returned from town, ready for an uneventful night, little knowing he was going to make history Johnny Morrow, the afternoon driller, was hunkered down for a relaxed evening and had got the cards out. lf all event well, even the graveyard crew could sleep through to its long change. But this was not to be. Suddenly at 5,374 feet, after having cut only 13 feet, drilling speeded up to between three to five minutes to the foot. Something was going on down below, but what was it? The author allowed the drilling to continue to 5,381 feet and shut the rig down, ordering circulation for samples. Sample catcher Barker went out to the shale shaker to watch for a change. The combination of the small pump, the 3½inch drill pipe, and the depth would mean that returns would not reach the surface for hours. When they did, here was this coarsely crystalline dolomite with not a trace of oil staining in it. (This was the D-3, later to be named Leduc. No chromatographs to detect traces of hydrocarbons.) The roughnecks, ever mindful of their need for easy tours, immediately lashed out at the author when he was considering pulling out for a drill stem test. All kinds of threats and imprecations were hurled at him, but he had been present at so many tests which flowed water that another "dip in the ocean'' would not be out of the ordinary.

When the graveyard crew came on shift, they were also very riled up. Their whole night was to be ruined because they had to pull out. The author had gone in to get Bill Wedderburn, Dowell's tester. Because of the late hour, and the feeling that it was going to be water anyway, the author did not contact Fred Killer, his boss, who was in charge of all the well-sitters. This was a breach of routine which would have far-reaching consequences the next morning.

Clark Siferd, one of the sample catchers, remembers he had agreed to work graveyard for Homer Gingras. Siferd used to rack pipe routinely for those chaps who wanted to get away for their 'long change', but they never paid him! Bill Blinn was the driller, Joe Henry was working derrick, and Clark was racking pipe along with Art Greene. Wedderburn made up the tool and they started back in at 3:00 am. The M.O. Johnson type was a full hole packer. Giving all credit possible to the crew, they did not run that packer (OD 6¼inch) too fast because there was only 9/16 inch annular clearance in the 7-3/8 inch hole. What a hazard! It took them two hours and forty minutes to get to bottom. At that time the dart was dropped, actuating the valve at 5:50 a.m. There was an immediate blow, increasing rapidly, then declining while the pipe was loading itself, but with what? Four minutes after the valve was opened there was almost one MMcf per day gas measured with the piton tube. Then all was relatively quiet until suddenly, seven minutes later, seven minutes since the dart was dropped, mud and oil came to the surface. The effect was astounding! A 200 foot high plume of fire shot up into the air. Fortunately the flare line had been secured. It had been sitting there in anticipation of favourable results from the D-2 but had not been needed - not until now. It didn't take anybody any time at all to order the packer valve closed and pull out of the hole.

Long before Lorne (Squeaky) Leeson, tool pushy had phoned in his drilling report to Calgary at 9:00 a.m., the Toronto stock brokers knew. Wedderburn thinks it was scouts watching both No. 2 and No. 3. A contact in Vancouver is also believed to have relayed word that Imperial had an oil well. Calgary was still in the dark, being asked by 56 Church Street (Imperial Oil's head office in Toronto), "What is going on?" The era of REAL BIG OIL in Alberta and Western Canada had begun that fateful morning of May 7, 1947.