By Greg Gazin
If you had asked me two weeks ago which province was the birthplace of the Canadian oil industry, I probably would have said Alberta, back in 1947, but I would have been very wrong. The birthplace of the Canadian oil is actually in Ontario, and it occurred 150 years ago, in 1858. Canada, in fact, may have the best claim to being the first country in the world with the ability to supply crude oil to a substantial refining industry.
It all started when a party of men dug a well, looking for water, near the banks of Black Creek, located in Lambton County, about 30 km southeast of Sarnia, ON. They struck oil instead. Black Creek was renamed Oil Springs after the discovery.
“The find happened by accident,” Earle Gray, author of
Ontario’s Petroleum Legacy: The Birth, Evolution and Challenges of a Global Industry, published by the Heritage Community Foundation, said recently. “Their well marked the discovery of the world’s first oil field (that) would supply a large and booming refining industry.” Gray, an authority on the oil business, was editor of Oilweek Magazine for almost two decades.
The discovery was significant, he added, even if the age of the “horseless carriage” was still a few decades off. “The first uses of oil were for lamp fuel and lubricant.”
The foundation of the oil industry, he said, was already in place at the time of the Black Creek discovery because there were as many as 70 refineries in the Eastern US producing kerosene, from coal. Interestingly, the process to turn coal into kerosene was developed by Nova Scotian Abraham Gesner, who some consider the Father of the North American Petroleum Industry. It was Gesner, in fact, who coined the term “kerosene” for coal oil.
Up until the discovery of oil off the banks of Black Creek, crude oil was only available from soil seepages, and was used primarily as a medicine - a cure-all, taken internally and used externally, to treat almost every imaginable illness at the time, including coughs, diphtheria, bruises, sprains and sores. The seepages didn’t, however, produce enough oil to create an industry.
That had to wait for Black Creek when it became cheaper to produce kerosene from crude than coal. The discovery, Gray said, had a significant effect on the economy and the commercial impact was immediate.
“While the boom lasted only until the turn of the century,” he said, “for about 30 or 40 years, the production was enough to meet (Ontario’s) needs.” There was even enough left over for export.
The birth of the Canadian oil patch is filled with drama: incredible stories of rags to riches, of boom and bust cycles, of discoveries and disappointments. In fact, the birth itself could have played out differently, if not for unforeseen circumstances.
Charles Nelson Tripp, from Schenectady, NY, came up to Canada to find his fame and fortune working as a prospector, wildcatter and promoter. “Except for a rock,” Gray said, “Tripp would almost certainly have discovered the first commercial oil field two years before the strike at Oil Springs.”
Using an iron pipe in an attempt to widen a hole in his search for oil, Tripp struck a rock at 27 feet. The pipe broke, and Tripp abandoned the attempt. Ironically, seven years later, a major find, the Bothwell field, was discovered not far the site of the infamous broken pipe.
The Black Creek/Oil Springs strike is credited to James Miller Williams and his Canadian Oil Company. Williams, a carriage maker from Hamilton and Tripp’s creditor (likely from Tripp’s purchases of wagons), took over Tripp’s bankrupt operations. Tripp, meanwhile, died at 43 in a lonely hotel room within a decade, of what was referred to as “congestion of the brain.”
Gray said that the early days of the oil industry in Ontario is not unlike the tales of the old west and the gold rush. Sadly, he added, history books are mostly silent about the oil industry: “There seems to be more talk about mines than about oil.”
The wild fluctuations in the price of oil today don’t surprise Gray. He said that, during oil’s early period, the price fluctuated from $0.10 to $10 a barrel then back down to $0.25 (in late 19th century dollars).
Oil is still flowing from the Black Creek/Oil Springs discovery. In fact, Gray said, “the properties at Oil Springs are likely the oldest continuous oil producing wells in the world. They may be producing only a trickle but they are producing nonetheless.”
One of the original producers is still pumping oil out of the properties. Charles Oliver Fairbank IIII is the great grandson of John Henry (J.H.) Fairbank, who first pumped oil at there in 1861. The technology J.H. invented, called the Jerker Rod and Field Wheel, is still in use there today for numerous low-yield, closely spaced wells. Gray describes the process as a system that pushes and pulls a series of slender rods suspended by hangars and connected to a teeter-tottering walking beam: when set in motion, it pumps oil from up to 100 wells.
The Oil Springs’ site and surrounding area have been nominated by the United Nations (UNESCO), to be designated as a world heritage site.
To find out more information on the 150th Anniversary of Canada’s Petroleum Industry, and buy Ontario’s Petroleum Legacy: The Birth, Evolution and Challenges of a Global Industry, visit the Canadian Petroleum Heritage web site at AlbertaSource.ca – The Alberta On-Line Encyclopedia.
