Our Mission

The Canadian Petroleum Discovery Centre exists to preserve and display oilfield and related artifacts of the past for the cultural and historical benefit of future generations and to educate individuals about environment and energy industry related matters.

Our History

The Canadian Petroleum Discovery Centre at Leduc No. 1 Historic Site opened in 1997 to showcase Canada's oil industry to the world. The Centre contains artifacts, photos, archives, interpretive displays and oilfield equipment all designed to give the viewing public a taste of what it is like to be part of our oil industry.

The Canadian Petroleum Discovery Centre is not-for-profit and largely volunteer driven. It is owned and operated by Leduc/Devon Oilfield Historical Society. To learn more about becoming a member visit the membership page.

Leduc History

No one was expecting history to be made when, on a chilly day in November 1946, Leduc #1 was “spudded-in” on a farm belonging to Mike Turta. Most members of the drilling crew expected the well would turn out to be yet another dry hole, and there was good reason for their pessimism.

	Before Leduc

At the end of the Second World War the outlook for the Canadian oil industry was dim. During more than 50 years of exploration, the industry had drilled about 1,000 wells at a cost of around $200 million, an enormous amount in those days. But the pickings were slim. All the industry had to show for its efforts was reserves of 250 million barrels of crude oil and six trillion cubic feet of natural gas (the latter, although a significant amount, was virtually worthless at the time because supply greatly exceeded demand). No oil field of any significance had been discovered in 10 years, and the oil from that discovery at Turner Valley, near Calgary, was fast running out. Total Canadian oil production in 1946 was around 7.2 million barrels, about a tenth of the country’s annual oil consumption. The remainder had to be imported, mainly from the United States.

Even Imperial, the country’s most active oil explorer, was growing discouraged. Its last major discovery had come in 1920, when a brilliant young geologist named Ted Link- who was later to play a major role in the Leduc discovery- had found oil at Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories. (And that discovery had been regarded as being of limited commercial value: Norman Well’s remote location just south of the Arctic Circle rendered transportation to southern markets virtually impossible at the time).

	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.

	Last Chance Well

However, Imperial’s oil explorers, led by the enthusiastic Ted Link, now the company’s chief geologist, were not ready to throw in the towel. At a critical where-do-we-go-from-here strategy meeting held at the company’s Toronto headquarters in April 1946, senior members of the technical staff urged that they be allowed to make one last effort to find oil. The most promising prospect in their view was an area of central Alberta that began northwest of Edmonton and extended south through the town of Leduc and beyond.

Imperial’s directors were less than thrilled with the idea of throwing more good money after bad. Many years later, Bill Twaits, who was then a director and was later to become president and chairman of Imperial’s board, recalled, “There was a major argument in the Imperial board, ending in a reluctant agreement to proceed with the test rather than immediately developing a final design on a gas-synthesis plant…. The word was ‘After $23 million [spent on fruitless exploration], this is final.”

One month after the fateful meeting, the decision to drill in central Alberta received a strong endorsement from Imperial’s 32 staff geologists. Link had sent them a questionnaire asking them where they thought oil was most likely to be found in Western Canada. The plains of central Alberta were the first choice of 18 geologists and the second choice of another six.

The decision to select Leduc as the site of the first in the series of last-chance wells was taken after seismic testing- a technique used to determine the profile of subterranean rock structures- revealed an irregularity: an unexpected rise in the underlying Cretaceous formation. It was only a small anomaly- what is known as a “one-point-high”- and was likely of no significance, the geologists thought. But there was a slim chance that it could have oil trapped beneath it, and if Imperial was going to drill anywhere in the area, it might as well be on that anomaly.

	Vern "the dry-hole" Hunter

The man chosen to supervise the drilling of the Leduc well- the “tool push” in oil industry parlance- was Vern Hunter, the son of a Baptist minister from Nanton, Alberta, who had overseen the drilling of many of Imperial’s unsuccessful wells- so many, in fact, that he had acquired the affectionate nickname of “Dry Hole” Hunter.

When the well was spudded-in on that chilly November day, Vern Hunter commented wryly, “They’ll never find oil here- it’s too close to the city.” In the opinion of Doug Layer, a geologist who was to play a significant role in the discovery, most Imperial managers shared Hunter’s initial pessimism: “They didn’t think that Leduc could be any different [from the previous 133 wells].”

	No Ordinary Posthole

And yet, almost from the beginning there was a different feel to this well. The drillers and the roughnecks sensed something they hadn’t often encountered before: hope. It was hard to pin down, but it was there. “Just when most of us felt we had a tiger by the tail is difficult to say,” said George McClintock. “[But] all of us were convinced that we were dealing with no ordinary posthole. Favorable evidence was accumulating constantly.”

As Vern Hunter was to say later, “All the way down from the first 2,000 feet [610 meters] or so, we started to pick up a little [natural] gas and signs of oil in the Cretaceous. The whole thing was alive. And when we got down to the D2 [a layer of Devonian rock], well, that’s when the whole thing started for Western Canada.”

	Leduc #1 Was a Winner

On a bitter afternoon in late January 1947, Steve Cosburn, another geologist, was at the well when drilling reached 1,532 meters. Examining samples of dolomite limestone penetrated by the drill bit, he noticed a clear, yellowish liquid in the limestone pores. Oil!

A few days later, on February 3, when drilling had reached 1,544 metres, a geyser shot from the drill pipe, covering Al Desnoyers, one of the roughnecks, with a mixture of mud and light crude oil. After 133 dry holes it was a welcome shower. There were no longer any lingering doubts- Leduc #1 was a winner.

Ten days later, as Imperial was holding a reception at Edmonton’s Macdonald Hotel to celebrate bringing the discovery well into production that afternoon, farmer Mike Turta hitched a team of horses to a sleigh, drove into the nearby town of Calmar for beer and threw a party for the 35 drillers and roughnecks who were on the site that day.

Youngest of them was John Funk, then 22, who still vividly remembers the moment the oil started to flow. “Vern Hunter”, he recalled some time ago at his Edmonton home, “thought I should have the honor of lighting the flare. I’d practiced the day before, and when the moment arrived, I swung that burning oil-soaked sack around my head and let it fly.

“Whoosh! Flames and black smoke shot up. The well belched a few times as it cleared itself, then a perfect smoke ring formed and floated off in the clear, cold air. A good omen, some people said.”

	Leduc #2 Hits the Jackpot

A good omen indeed. The previous day, on a location a couple of kilometers south-southwest of the first well, Imperial had spudded in Leduc #2. Testing the D2 layer of that well- the source of oil for Leduc #1- had been disappointing, and those on the spot had faced a dilemma. Should the well be abandoned or was it worth going deeper? The problem was solved when the drill bit unexpectedly encountered a layer of porous dolomite- a potential oil reservoir material- at 1,637 metres. Aubrey Kerr, who was in charge of geology for the Leduc field at the time and was at the well site that day, ordered drilling to stop and decided to have a sample of rock tested for oil. Initial results were negative, but nonetheless, success was not long in coming. As dawn broke on May 7, 1947, oil began flowing from a completely new and prolific producing zone- the soon-to-be-famous D3 formation. The drill bit had penetrated an oil-bearing Devonian reef, and Imperial had hit the jackpot. Subsequent exploration determined that the D3 reservoir covered some 8,863 hectares in the 350-to-400 million-year-old Devonian formation and that the 12 metre-thick producing layer contained about 390 million barrels of oil.

More important still, perhaps, was the fact that the discovery had uncovered a vital secret for Alberta’s oil industry. It demonstrated for the first time that oil-bearing Devonian reef structures existed in the western provinces. Before Leduc, conventional thinking among Canada’s geologists was that oil in central Alberta would most likely be found at a shallower level, in Cretaceous rock.

	The Legacy of Leduc

The Leduc wells disproved that theory and led the way to the discovery of a series of major oil fields in Alberta. When Leduc #1 was drilled in 1946, Alberta had a grand total of 523 oil wells in production. By 1956, this total had skyrocketed to 7,400. Over the same period, Alberta’s oil output zoomed from 6.7 million barrels annually to 144 million, and Canada was well on the way to being a major international oil producer.

The hole drilled on Mike Turta’s farm, for which few people had had any expectations, was destined to make history and, in the process, help shape the future of the nation.

Reprinted with permission from The Discovery that Made History: The legacy of Leduc, Imperial Oil Limited, 1997.