Reflections

Alberta and the British Empire

Forward

This is the first in a series of little known narratives linking World Petroleum Congress 2000 to past WPC meetings. Alberta’s “Responsibilities” to the British Empire were not achievable even at the time of the first Congress held in 1933 in London U.K.

With only a few seeps on the plains and an abandoned oil field at Waterton, Alberta was not ready to take on a totally unrealistic obligation forced on it by Ottawa in 1910, the first of countless disputes over the years. An Order-in-Council was passed giving the Crown “the right to expropriate all crude oil for the Royal Navy”. This was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, because he (and others)¹ could see crude replacing coal.

To further ensure security of supplies, the colonies of the British Empire had conveniently discovered crude, notably Trinidad and Burma (1902). These outposts continued with others to furnish crude as shown on table below:

The Province of Alberta, now that it had acquired its mineral titles (1930-31) still had not achieved much by 1939 (Turner Valley 1936). The Department of Lands and Mines decided to publish a modest book: “The History of Petroleum in Alberta” with the fond hope that it would boost the British Empire’s total production, then only 3% of total world production. Alberta’s urgent need to discover crude was demonstrated in 1938 when a high-powered delegation looking for funding went to the U.K. and returned empty-handed. Nothing would materialize, because it would be another eight years before Leduc would burst on the scene with its hitherto unknown Devonian reef find.

hitherto unknown Devonian reef find. Two quotes from the book are instructive the responsibility for effecting a definite improvement in British Empire production would seem to rest to a considerable extent with Alberta.....and ......Further expansion of Turner Valley and bringing in of one or more major fields.....for the British Empire will be a definite factor in world oil production....it is not unduly optimistic to expect that this may happen.....in a future not very far removed.

But as we all know, the British Empire was already crumbling, Leduc would be the hoped-for goal to fulfill the Department’s prophecy in a way far beyond the wildest hopes of that little 1939 book.

Yet in 1933, the beginnings of OPEC were already evident, when Ottawa imposed an embargo on Baku crude in favour of Trinidad, even though Venezuela crude was being refined in Montreal.