Within a week of graduating from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), Don Patterson found himself on a Chevron Single Turbo Beaver and whisked off to Rainbow Lake. He had graduated from SAIT in the Spring of 1968, and was among four students that immediately landed a job at Chevron. As he sat on the plane, crammed between bags of groceries, a bag of potatoes on his lap, he was filled with excitement and ready to start his career as a rig supervisor for Chevron’s drilling [Read more]
FREE – Oil and Gas Mapping Mobile App – Petro Ninja
We are pleased to announce that Petro Ninja is now available for iPhone and Android devices. Petro Ninja is a new mapping application that displays well and production data for Alberta, Saskatchewan, and soon British Columbia. Data Capture The problem with a lot of data recorded in the field is storage. Where can you store field data so it remains accessible and useful in the future? Pictures of well sites, risers, pipelines, and facilities are a great example of data that loses [Read more]
The 10 Million Barrels Club of Alberta
Before publishing the article The Most Prolific Oil Well in Alberta, I asked many friends in the industry if they could guess the size (in terms of cumulative oil production) of the largest oil well in Alberta. I heard estimates as low as 3 and as high as 10 million barrels. Many were shocked to hear that 100/09-22-051-27W4 has produced 39.7 million barrels. This brought up another interesting question, how many other wells produced 10 million barrels or more? To date, there are 41 wells that [Read more]
The Most Prolific Oil Well in Alberta
For optimal viewing, please use Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. The interactive charts may not load properly when using Internet Explorer. In 1948, Imperial Oil was faced with a choice to drill near Golden Spike, AB or surrender the land back to the Government. Their seismic data for the area was poor quality and the geophysicist could not identify a drillable target. Imperial's Calgary Manager ordered the drilling superintendent, Vern "Dry Hole" Hunter, to move a rig out there saying: "It's no [Read more]
Canadian Oil and Gas Production: Older than the Country Itself
For optimal viewing, please use Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. The interactive charts may not load properly when using Internet Explorer. Western Canada is traditionally associated with oil and gas production but in truth, all provinces and territories have commercial production or have identified the existence of potential reservoirs.[1] Many wrongly believe that the first oil well was Edwin Drake's 1858 well in Pennsylvania, but in fact, the first commercial oil well in history was in Oil [Read more]
Top 10 Kakwa Montney Wells of 2015
One hundred kilometres south of Grande Prairie, you will find one of the hottest shale plays in North America: the Kakwa Montney. The play is home to one of the fastest growing Canadian O&G companies, Seven Generations. As discussed in a recent BOE Report article, Seven Generations has been one of a few companies that has continued to grow in spite of low commodity prices. Exploration in the Kakwa area started in the 1950s, but it wouldn’t be until the 1980s when companies began producing [Read more]