No Oil In Alberta, Eh?

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Doug Gamble claims that a Dowell Inc. tester could not be found, and so Halliburton was called out instead. Doug recalls the Halliburton tester taunting Rod Morris about doing Dowell's work for them, to which Rod retorted, "Go ahead and laugh. This'll be your last goddam test." But Doug's most vivid memory concerns coming on tour at midnight, after they had run the Halliburton test, and finding Don Hunt, short cherubic mud man with an enormous capacity for booze, and Rod Morris "drunker than skunks," Rod having sent Don to town for a case of whiskey. "About 18 stands out (of the hole), she cut loose; however, we had the motors shut down, and she blew down over the pump house roof and filled the mud pit." By daybreak, all the area farmers were there, "lined up like crows on a rail, watching what was going on."

On August 31st, the Toronto office was starting to absorb the momentous news. As Fin Lineham indicated, no one was really prepared for this; there was an unspoken belief that Redwater would be just another dry hole. Even at the wellsite there was a desperate shortage of tubular goods. Seven-inch production casing had to be hauled in from Edmonton, and was immediately run in the hole to total depth and cemented.

The first real look at the producing formation was obtained on September 5th from a five-foot core taken from 3130-3136 feet. Rod described it as "oil-stained porous granular limestone". Not wanting anyone to know what was going on, a prolonged production test using a hook-wall packer was run under cover of darkness. A rate of 19 bbls/hr and a GOR of 149 were recorded. Those present were Maurice Paulson and Vern Hunter, both from Devon, Nate Goodman, Conservation Board engineer, along with Fin Lineham, Fred Killer and Rod Morris. Ed Tovell, Dowell Inc., ran the test. It confirmed good productivity and an under-saturated reservoir.

Shortly after the production test, Jack McCaskill received a phone call from Dave Gustafson, division engineer in Calgary, assigning him as responsible agent in the field⁷ pending the arrival of other engineers. McCaskill was stationed at Lloydminster at that time, as petroleum engineer with Imperial. On his way from Lloydminster to Redwater, he remembers seeing a huge pillar of black smoke (Atlantic No.3 wild well burning in the Leduc field).

Following the running of the velocity survey on September 7th, coring was resumed in 5-foot bites, each core being followed by a drillstem test. Rod described the cores as "vuggy" As the hole deepened, recovery improved, getting dense vuggy crystalline limestone. The final core: 3252 to 3254 was noted to be slightly oilstained, dense to vuggy crystalline, with a washed appearance. The drillstem test interval 3249 to 3254 recovered 2400 feet of fluid, of which 720 was emulsified oil and water and 1680 feet of black sulphur salt water. This test took place on September 24th - nearly three weeks had been spent in evaluating the pay thickness of the section, some 140 feet.

Rod Morris recorded in his diary for September 25th: "Spent most of the day preparing for and meeting Mr. H. H. Hewetson and Imperial Oil directors." This would have been one of the few occasions on which Rod would have to put up with what he referred to as "the Jesus department." A large delegation was to meet with the townspeople and the roughnecks to spread the good ward. Walker Taylor, head of the producing department, introduced Henry Hewetson, who said to the gathering: "We came out here to have a look, and we like it. We are happy to be in Redwater." Imperial Oil brought 500 box lunches from Edmonton for the picnic.

On the ensuing days, the crew prepared the well for production. A liner was run and cemented to 3264 feet (FTD) and the well put on production October 7, 1948.

Looking back, 1946 was the turning point for Imperial. These two anomalies, Leduc and Redwater, both identified geophysically during 1946 without benefit of geological subsurface trial and error would ultimately yield over one billion barrels of crude.

NO OIL IN ALBERTA, EH?