Barreling Along

Western Canada gave a significant sign last week of its growing independence in the oil business. The Dominion's second largest producer, British American Oil Co., Ltd., announced that it was reducing its imports of U.S. crude by 2,500 barrels a day, would cut them twice as much by month's end.

The announcement came almost two years to the day (Feb. 13, 1947) after Alberta's famed Leduc well had started production. In those two years Alberta's output had risen to 45,000 barrels a day, was just a shade short of meeting the average daily oil requirements (55,000 barrels) of Canada's three prairie provinces.

Several other fields, discovered since Leduc, were coming into production. No less than 85 drilling rigs were punching the Alberta earth in search of new oil pockets ; but for the steel shortage, there would be twice as many. Also at work were 65 crews with seismographs and gravitometers, picking likely spots for the drillers to "spud in." In 1949, bills for oil exploration would top $20 million.

Long irked because U.S. oilmen pooh-poohed their efforts, Albertans could bask at last in recognition from Tulsa's Oil and Gas Journal: "Probably the most noteworthy development in the Western Hemisphere is the rapid rise in 1948 [oil] output in Canada."

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