The Hemisphere: The Biggest Gas Well

The world’s biggest gas well blew in, and it was enough to wow even the most blase of engineers—”This is one helluva big well . . . the biggest.” That it was. Drilled by Shell Oil Co. of Canada, Ltd. and the British American Oil Co, Ltd., in the muskeg 150 miles northwest of Edmonton, Alta., it roared in with a fabulous open-flow potential of 1.5 billion cu. ft. per day. Its closest competitor is a 500 million-cu.-ft. well owned by Phillips Petroleum Co. in Pecos County, Texas, and the nearest thing Canada has seen is a dwarf by comparison: a British American well with a flow of 280 million cu. ft.

Announced last week, Canada’s record breaker took eight months to drill, augers down more than 12,000 ft. through a thick cap of Devonian rock. The gas-bearing section is 551 ft. thick, which indicates a reservoir of major proportions and almost an embarrassment of riches for Canada. Before the find, estimated Alberta natural gas reserves stood at 21 trillion cu. ft., which must now be revised upward. The new well alone could supply all the gas the new Trans-Canada pipeline can pump when it goes into operation late this year.