| This article is part of a series on |
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| Timeline of Alberta history |
This is a brief timeline covering the history of the petroleum industry Alberta and its predecessor states.
| This article is part of a series on |
| Alberta |
|---|
| |
| Topics |
| History |
| Politics |
| Timeline of Alberta history |
This is a brief timeline covering the history of the petroleum industry Alberta and its predecessor states.
| Date | Event | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| 1715 | Captain Swan reports finding "gum or pitch" in the region now known as the Athabasca oil sand. The Captain's report is the first known to mention the oil sands. | [1] |
| April 14, 1872 | Dominion Lands Act receives royal assent, granting mineral rights to settlers under certain conditions. | [2] [ additional citation(s) needed ] |
| 1874 | George Mercer Dawson files the first government report of the oil sands when surveying for the International Boundary Commission. | [3] |
| 1902 | The Rocky Mountain Development Company drills the first oil producing well, Lineham Discovery Well No. 1, in Western Canada at Cameron Creek. | [3] [4] |
| September 1, 1905 | The Alberta Act creates Alberta as a province from the North-West Territories. Resource rights are still held by the federal government. | |
| 1914 | Dingman No. 1 strikes oil starting an oil boom that subsides due to World War I. | [3] |
| April 17, 1915 | Public Utilities Board is created by the Alberta government as the provinces first organization partially responsible for energy resources. The organization later spawns the Petroleum and Natural Gas Conservation Board, then the Energy Utilities Board, and is then split into Energy Resources Conservation Board and Alberta Energy Regulator. | [5] |
| 1925 | Construction on Bitumount, an experimental site dedicated to separating bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands, begins. | [6] |
| December 14, 1929 | Alberta Natural Resources Act passed, transferring control of natural resources and Crown land to Alberta. | [7] |
| 1931 | Alberta government levies its first royalty, at five percent, on oil and gas production. | [8] [ better source needed ] |
| 1939 | Shell opens exploration offices in Alberta. | [9] [ better source needed ] |
| February 13, 1947 | Leduc No. 1 strikes oil starting Alberta's post-World War II oil boom. | |
| 1947 | ATCO is incorporated. | [10] |
| June 1948 | Calgary Petroleum Club founded. | [11] |
| April 30, 1949 | Enbridge incorporated by Imperial Oil as the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company. | [12] [13] |
| 1950 | Interprovincial Pipeline (currently Enbridge Line 1) constructed as the first large pipeline to carry Alberta oil. | [14] |
| 1951 | Alberta government announces the plant at Bitumount was able to separate bitumen from the oil sands profitably, following the research of Karl Clark. | [6] |
| March 21, 1951 | Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited incorporated by Special Act of Parliament. In 2019, the company changed its name to TC Energy. | [15] [ better source needed ] |
| 1953 | Husky Energy incorporated in Canada after splitting off from American counterpart | |
| February 23, 1953 | Pembina No. 1 is drilled marking the first use of hydraulic fracturing in Alberta. | [16] |
| October 17, 1953 | Trans Mountain Pipeline enters use as the first pipeline to carry Alberta oil to the Pacific. | [3] [17] |
| November 1959 | National Energy Board created to organize interprovincial energy infrastructure. | [18] [ better source needed ] |
| 1965 | Rainbow Lake oil field discovered by Banff Oil Company. | [3] [19] |
| 1973 | 1973 Oil Crisis begins precipitated by Western involvement in the Yom Kippur War causes OPEC to embargo many Western countries, increasing the price and thus competitiveness of Alberta oil. | [20] |
| October 22, 1979 | Nova Chemicals opens the first ethylene plant in Alberta to be used in plastic production. | [21] |
| October 28, 1980 | National Energy Program is announced by the federal government, creating anger and resentment in the West and set to take effect on January 1, 1981. | [22] |
| June 1, 1985 | Western Accord takes effect, ending the National Energy Program. | [23] |
| April 1, 1994 | AltaGas begins operations in Calgary. | [24] |
| 2001 | Cenovus Energy pilots the first use of the SAGD system, technology developed by the Alberta Crown corp, the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority at its Foster Creek location. | [25] |
| September 29, 2004 | Imperial Oil announces headquarters move from Toronto to Calgary. | [26] |
| May 29, 2018 | Trans Mountain Pipeline announced to be bought by federal government after the pipelines expansion faced ongoing regulatory delays for five years. | [27] |
| June 21, 2019 | The Canadian Energy Regulator Act receives royal assent, creating the Canadian Energy Regulator to replace the National Energy Board. | [28] |
| February 6, 2020 | 2020 Canadian pipeline and railway protests begin as members of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte First Nation blockade a Canadian National Railway rail line just north of Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. | [29] |
The economy of Alberta is the sum of all economic activity in Alberta, Canada's fourth largest province by population. Alberta's GDP in 2018 was CDN$338.2 billion.
The Athabasca oil sands, also known as the Athabasca tar sands, are large deposits of bitumen, a heavy and viscous form of petroleum, located in northeastern Alberta, Canada. These reserves are one of the largest sources of unconventional oil in the world, making Canada a significant player in the global energy market.
The National Energy Program was an energy policy of the Canadian federal government from 1980 to 1985. The economically nationalist policy sought to secure Canadian energy independence, though was strongly opposed by the private sector and the oil-producing Western Canadian provinces, most notably Alberta.
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Canada has access to all main sources of energy including oil and gas, coal, hydropower, biomass, solar, geothermal, wind, marine and nuclear. It is the world's second largest producer of uranium, third largest producer of hydro-electricity, fourth largest natural gas producer, and the fifth largest producer of crude oil. In 2006, only Russia, the People's Republic of China, the United States and Saudi Arabia produce more total energy than Canada.
The electricity policy of Alberta, enacted through several agencies, is to create an electricity sector with a competitive market that attracts investors, while providing consumers with reliable and affordable electricity, as well as reducing harmful pollution to protect the environment and the health of Albertans, according to their 2022 website.
Although there are numerous oil companies operating in Canada, as of 2009, the majority of production, refining and marketing was done by fewer than 20 of them. According to the 2013 edition of Forbes Global 2000, canoils.com and any other list that emphasizes market capitalization and revenue when sizing up companies, as of March 31, 2014 these are the largest Canada-based oil and gas companies.
The Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines were a planned-but-never-built project for a twin pipeline from Bruderheim, Alberta, to Kitimat, British Columbia. The project was active from the mid-2000s to 2016. The eastbound pipeline would have imported natural gas condensate, and the westbound pipeline would have exported diluted bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands to a marine terminal in Kitimat for transportation to Asian markets via oil tankers. The project would have also included terminal facilities with "integrated marine infrastructure at tidewater to accommodate loading and unloading of oil and condensate tankers, and marine transportation of oil and condensate." The CA$7.9 billion project was first proposed in the mid-2000s but was postponed several times. The project plan was developed by Enbridge Inc., a Canadian crude oil and liquids pipeline and storage company.
The National Energy Board was an independent economic regulatory agency created in 1959 by the Government of Canada to oversee "international and inter-provincial aspects of the oil, gas and electric utility industries." Its head office was located in Calgary, Alberta.
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The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) is a quasi-judicial, independent agency regulating the development of energy resources in Alberta. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, the AER's mandate under the Responsible Energy Development Act (REDA) is "to provide for the efficient, safe, orderly and environmentally responsible development of energy resources and mineral resources in Alberta.”
Pipelines in Canada are important components of energy infrastructure in Canada as the majority of natural gas and oil deposits are located in landlocked Alberta and need to be transported to ports or terminals to access larger markets.
The Canadian province of Alberta faces a number of environmental issues related to natural resource extraction—including oil and gas industry with its oil sands—endangered species, melting glaciers in banff, floods and droughts, wildfires, and global climate change. While the oil and gas industries generates substantial economic wealth, the Athabasca oil sands, which are situated almost entirely in Alberta, are the "fourth most carbon intensive on the planet behind Algeria, Venezuela and Cameroon" according to an August 8, 2018 article in the American Association for the Advancement of Science's journal Science. This article details some of the environmental issues including past ecological disasters in Alberta and describes some of the efforts at the municipal, provincial and federal level to mitigate the risks and impacts.
Below is a brief timeline covering the history of Alberta and its predecessor states.
Tourmaline Oil is a Canadian energy company engaged in the exploration, development, and extraction of crude oil and natural gas. It is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta in Canada. A major natural gas producer, it became the largest natural gas producer in Canada in 2021. It is also the first Canadian oil and gas exploration and development company to directly engage in the liquified natural gas business.
