THIS IS NO PICNIC! The Canol Project in World War II |
This re-creation of the original hiring poster clearly spells out the dangers and risks involved in working on the Canol Project. The job's location was not mentioned due to the need for secrecy. Poster Design: T. Asla PART ONE: Oil was found along the banks of the Mackenzie River in the wilderness of northwestern Canada about 200 years ago. Beginning in 1920, the oil field at Norman Wells became the northern-most producing oil field in North America, just 75 miles from the Arctic Circle. (See map below.) In 1939, an 840-barrel-per-day straight-run refinery was installed at Norman Wells, 52 miles downstream (north) from the old trading post of Fort Norman. This was a small scale operation. Three wells were enough to supply the annual production of 24,000 barrels needed to meet the area's requirements, and the refinery operated only in the summer. Additional wells were capped for lack of a market. However, this oil had some very important qualities. The crude had a paraffin base and a low pour point, allowing it to flow at temperatures down to 70 degrees below zero or lower. PART TWO: This oil became very important after December 7, 1941, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and, soon after, invaded the Aleutian islands off the Alaskan coast. As the United States suffered defeat after defeat in the Pacific, US military planners believed there was a very real possibility the Japanese might invade Alaska itself. In order to get supplies and equipment to Alaska to stop this possible invasion, the United States and Canada agreed to build the Alaska-Canadian Highway (ALCAN) from the United States to Alaska--one of the greatest engineering feats in history. All this construction required oil--lots of it!--and about three months after the 1942 decision to build the ALCAN Highway, the Canadian Oil (CANOL) Project was approved. The objectives were:
As huge as it was, the CANOL Project was just one of three major missions of the US Northwest Service Command that had its headquarters in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. The other two missions were to build the ALCAN Highway from Fairbanks, Alaska to Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada, and to send nearly 8,000 planes to the USSR for their use in the fight against Germany. But that's another story. A contract was negotiated between the US War Department and Bechtel Price-Callahan, a pro-tem partnership made up of W.A. Bechtel Co., the H.C. Price Co., and the W.E. Callahan Construction Co. The Noble Drilling Corporation of Tulsa, Oklahoma, received the contract to drill the oil wells along the Mackenzie River near Norman Wells, Northwest Territories, Canada. Ed Holt, then the vice president and operations manager of the Noble organization, directed this effort at the same time he was getting oil wells drilled in Sherwood Forest in England. MAP OF THE CANOL PROJECT
© 1996, Boulton B. Miller. All rights reserved. Equipment, supplies, and personnel began flowing through Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in late May, 1942. The route was over the Northern Alberta Railway some 285 miles to Waterways, the end of the rail line. This was the starting point for an 1,1 00 mile water trek to Norman Wells. From the railhead at Waterways, the supplies were ferried on the Athabaska River, then across Athabaska Lake, and onto the Slave River as far as Fitzgerald, a point nearly 300 miles from the railhead. At Fitzgerald, there were 16 miles of rapids on the Slave River, so all freight, including the barges, had to be portaged to the foot of the rapids at Fort Smith. Everything was then moved down (north) the Slave River another 190 miles to Great Slave Lake, then about 150 miles across the lake to the Mackenzie River, and then another 500 miles down (north) the river to Norman Wells. When one looks at a map of the Western hemisphere, one realizes the jumping off point at Edmonton was halfway between the drilling site at Norman Wells, and the Noble Drilling Corporation's headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Edmonton-based route to Norman Wells proved inadequate to meet the needs, and it was augmented by a 1,000 mile winter road constructed in the Mackenzie River valley. In addition, 10 airfields were carved out of the wilderness for use by transport planes provided by the US Army, contractors, and Canadian Pacific Airlines. Ski- and float-equipped planes were also pressed into service, except during the freeze-up and break-up of the river ice. In spite of all these efforts, yet another new road had to be cut from the ALCAN Highway, northeast, toward Norman Wells, a distance of between 500 and 600 miles. This road made it possible to construct the pipeline that would move the crude from Norman Wells to the refinery in Whitehorse. As an interim measure, and in an effort to reduce the tonnage over the White Pass and Yukon Route railway, a pipeline and pumping stations were constructed from Skagway to Whitehorse, and on south to Watson Lake. The wells at Norman Wells were drilled by the Noble Drilling Corporation, of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ed Holt was the operations manager for the company, and Mr. Noble's right-hand-man. For the CANOL, Norman Wells Project, Holt organized seven drilling rigs with crews. Three of the rigs were used for exploratory work north of Norman Wells, above the Arctic Circle, while four were located at Norman Wells. Thanks to the heroic efforts of Holt's crews, oil production was ready by time the pipeline, tank farms, and refinery were completed. It is hard to image the problems associated with organizing work crews for drilling operations during the war. Most experienced oil men were draft age and physically fit. This meant Ed Holt had to obtain a release for each employee's draft requirement before the man could join a crew. Before long, he had a working agreement with Major General Hershey, the head of the Draft Board in Washington, DC. He found the Draft Board rather sympathetic to the requirement for these individuals. Ed's secretary in Tulsa could call in the names of employees, and their personal histories, to a secretary in General Hershey's office and obtain approval for a release in about a week. The Army had a lot of specialists, but in time of war, its leaders recognized that civilian know-how was a national resource. Oil-rig workers, operators, and managers were just not Army classifications. Holt found working with the Labor Relations Board a somewhat different organization from the rather sympathetic Draft Board. The labor group was located in New York City--a long, long way from Oklahoma and the rough-and-tumble world of oil drilling. Ultimately, Ed worked out an arrangement with the labor people, and accomplished the nearly impossible task of recruiting the kind of men needed to work around-the-clock in top secret locations far from home, under some of the worst weather conditions found anywhere in the world. On February 16, 1944, the crew made the Golden Weld in the main pipeline, and two months later crude oil from Norman Wells flowed into Whitehorse, where the already-completed tank farms and refinery were ready for operation. The refinery was a potpourri of parts: tanks from a surplus refinery at Corpus Christi, Texas; boilers from an old power plant at Hamilton, Ontario; and turbines and generators from an idle mill at Pinedale, California. Various other parts were picked up from about 2,000 suppliers throughout the United States. While it was a great accomplishment, and may rightly be described as one of the greatest construction projects in history, some have called the $134 million CANOL Project "the most colossal blunder" of the second world war. Why? Because the need for the oil field had ceased to exist by the time it was completed. Having taken only 20 months to build, it was shut down and abandoned in 1945, less than a year after it opened, because the Japanese invasion of Alaska had never materialized. In all fairness to its planners, not even the most optimistic planner would have predicted such an outcome in the bleak days immediately following Pearl Harbor. Wars are wasteful by nature; the Canol Project had to be attempted because it would have been criminally negligent not to build it, based on the situation that existed during the early days of the war. PART THREE: In February, 1947, Imperial Oil discovered the Leduc oil field not far from Edmonton, Alberta. The field was huge, with an estimated 200,000,000 barrels of crude in its reserves. A refinery was needed in Edmonton; unfortunately, it would take three years to design, build, and begin operation of a new refinery. Once again, time, not money, was the major problem. Someone remembered the closed Canol Project Whitehorse refinery. Imperial Oil experts estimated it would cost just as much to dismantle the old refinery, move it from Whitehorse to Edmonton, and reconstruct it, as it would to buy a new refinery. But, the old refinery could be relocated in half the time it would take to obtain a new one. In the end, it actually took one month less than half the estimated time. It is probably fair to say the Whitehorse refinery is the most traveled oil refinery in the world. Its final trip was dubbed "Imperial Oil's $7,000,000 gamble." The company only paid the US Foreign Liquidation Commission $1 million for the refinery itself. The remaining $6 million was spent tearing the refinery apart, and moving the 7,000 tons of pieces more than 1,300 miles, first by truck from Whitehorse to Dawson Creek, and then by train on to Edmonton, its final destination. Imperial Oil contracted with the W.M. Barnes Company of Los Angeles, California, to handle the job. The Barnes Company operated a fleet of dinosaur-like diesel trucks, and had a reputation for doing good, fast work moving heavy loads. Unfortunately, the dreaded cold, arctic winter did not arrive on schedule. Instead, the weather produced a reverse twist: it wasn't cold enough to freeze the dirt roads to a depth sufficient to support the huge trucks and their large loads. Fortunately, the movement plan was flexible, and alternative carriers were pressed into service. Three large shipments went out to Skagway over the White Pass and Yukon Route railway. These then went down the coast on the Canadian Pacific Railway steamer Nootka to Vancouver, then by railroad on to Edmonton. When winter finally arrived, the original truck/train movement was put back into operation. In addition to the hazards of ice-surfaced, graveled road, a final, freakish problem arose during the first few weeks of the trucking program. The ALCAN highway was littered with nails, probably from loads of reclaimed lumber previously trucked down the highway from dismantled buildings. Punctures by the dozen were common. One driver had to fix 31 flats in the freezing arctic cold on a single round-trip from Whitehorse to Dawson Creek and back again! The poster had it right. The Canol Project was no picnic. WANT TO LEARN MORE? Finnie, Richard. 1945. CANOL: The Sub-Arctic Pipeline and Refinery Project Constructed by Bechtel-Price-Callahan for the Corps of Engineers, Unites States Army 1942-1944. San Francisco, CA: Taylor & Taylor, 1-9, 172. Imperial Oil. 1948. The Trail of '48. Booklet prepared by Imperial Oil Ltd. as a souvenir of the opening of the Edmonton Refinery, 17 July 1948. Prepared By: Boulton B. Miller
The Canol Project in World War II ©1996 Boulton B. Miller. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Copyright
© 1996, 2000, Wesley Retirement Communities, Inc. All rights reserved. This page was last revised August 04, 2003. |
