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Leduc No. 1 was a major crude oil discovery made near Leduc, Alberta, Canada on February 13, 1947. It provided the geological key to Alberta's most prolific conventional oil reserves and resulted in a boom in petroleum exploration and development across Western Canada. The discovery transformed the Alberta economy; oil and gas supplanted farming as the primary industry and resulted in the province becoming one of the richest in the country. Nationally, the discovery allowed Canada to become self-sufficient within a decade and ultimately a major exporter of oil. The discovery followed years of exploratory failures throughout the province. Imperial Oil had spent millions of dollars drilling 133 dry holes in the previous years as only minor discoveries were made. Leduc No. 1 proved that oil was trapped in what became known as the Leduc Formation and resulted in numerous major discoveries across the prairies. Leduc No. 1 produced 317,000 barrels of oil and 323 million cubic feet of natural gas before it was decommissioned in 1974, and was part of the Leduc-Woodbend oilfield that has produced over 300 million barrels of oil total. Billions of investment dollars flowed into Alberta and were followed by massive immigration to the province following the discovery. Alberta's two major cities saw their populations double within a few years. Calgary grew into a major financial centre and within two decades had the highest number of millionaires in Canada, per capita. The provincial capital of Edmonton, immediately northeast of the discovery, became a major petroleum production centre. A farming community with fewer than 900 residents in 1947, Leduc grew to become Alberta's 13th city, while several towns, including Devon and Swan Hills, were founded to support workers in the oil and gas industry. ==Background== Oil was known to exist in Alberta for many centuries. First Nations peoples used it to pitch canoes and to act as a medicinal ointment. Pioneer settlers to southern Alberta in the late 19th century noticed that an oily film occasionally covered pools of water, and that the air had unusual odours at times. In 1911, Ontario-born settler William Herron identified the nature of the odours from his time working in oil fields in Pennsylvania. He convinced Calgary businessman Archibald Dingman and Member of Parliament R. B. Bennett to visit the site near Turner Valley. The trio gathered four other investors, formed the Calgary Petroleum Products Company, Ltd. and began developing the region in search of oil.〔 The company drilled three wells beginning in 1913, and on May 14, 1914, the third struck a significant reserve at a depth of . Excitement reached a fevered pitch in Calgary once word of the Turner Valley strike reached town. Over 500 oil exploration companies were formed within days, the majority of which existed only to bilk unwitting citizens by selling shares in companies that owned no land and had no intention of drilling for oil. In fact, oil was not discovered initially, but rather naphtha – a form of natural gas – and Calgary settled into an economic recession that accompanied the outset of the First World War. A second major natural gas discovery brought renewed interest in 1924 when the Royalite No. 4 well blew in with a mammoth fire that burned uncontrolled for nearly a month. This find was made at a depth of . The new discovery resulted in the drilling of hundreds of wells in the region over the next 20 years. The first major crude oil discovery at Turner Valley was made in 1936 at a depth of , the deepest well in Alberta at the time.〔 The Turner Valley oil field reached a peak production of 10 million barrels in 1942,〔 four years after it was recognized as the largest oil field in the British Empire. In the 30 years following the initial discovery of 1914, oil companies spent over $150 million on exploration and development but found no major reserves of note. The provincial government resorted to subsidies and tax relief for companies to encourage further exploration.〔 Imperial Oil alone had drilled 133 wildcat wells throughout the province, all of which failed to yield significant quantities of oil. By the mid-1940s, the company neared the decision of abandoning the search for oil in the province in favour of focusing on the production synthetic gasoline out of natural gas. While the majority of the company's efforts drilled down only into Cretaceous levels where the Turner Valley strike was discovered, some of Imperial's geologists believed that greater reserves could be found deeper below the earth's surface. They convinced the company's technical committee to attempt one more deep drilling effort. Imperial's board of directors reluctantly supported the new effort, but made it known that this well, initially known as Wildcat No. 134, would be the company's last-chance effort. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Leduc No. 1」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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