133 Dry Holes in a Row
Between 1912 and the time of the Leduc discovery, Imperial had spent $23 million on oil exploration in Western Canada, conducting half of the industry’s geological studies on the Prairies and a third of the seismographic work, and drilling a quarter of the exploratory wells. All these efforts had produced few tangible results. By the end of 1946 the company had established a record of sorts: it had drilled 133 dry holes in a row.
In fact, a shortage of crude oil was opposing an increasingly serious problem for Imperial. Its share of oil from rapidly shrinking Turner Valley production and a few other wells in southern Alberta was barely enough to meet the needs of its Calgary (Alberta) refinery, and its refinery at Regina (Saskatchewan) had to be supplied with imported oil at the then punitive price of $5 a barrel.
The company urgently needed to discover new sources of crude oil if its refineries were to operate profitably, but it could not afford to continue pouring money into dry holes. In fact, Imperial’s directors were so disappointed with the company’s lack of exploration success that they were giving serious consideration to adopting a scheme for manufacturing synthetic gasoline from natural gas.
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