The 1924 Wonder Well in Turner Valley

A single well in Turner Valley blew wild and caught fire in late 1924.

For a time a pillar of fire illuminated the night sky – a torch testifying to the discovery that touched off the second Turner Valley Boom.

Most oilfields get one chance: Turner Valley had three – 1914, 1924 and 1936.

Crude oil greeted the drillers in 1936, near today’s village of Longview.

The 1924 wet gas well was a real game changer – sour gas and high pressure.

First, someone had to get the Wonder Well under control.

“I do not know of any well which we can compare with Royalite No. 4.” said Imperial Oil geologist Neil McQueen in late 1926.

Nothing about it was normal.

A metal bit at the bottom of a cable pounded 1000 metros into the Earth.

The drillers almost quit.

Then high-pressure gas erupted from the well.

“It blew the string of cable tools up in the hole, stuck them there, and shut off the gas.”

While fishing for the first string, a second string of tools got stuck too.

“It was then decided to try and close this well in, and conserve the gas for the ready market which we had in Calgary.”

The well would have none of that!

As pressure rose to 1200 pounds “everyone became a bit uneasy and they left the derrick.”

No one knows how high the pressure went, but eventually the casing in the hole broke loose from its cement collar, “starting to climb the derrick.”

After the pressure released around the casing, it settled back into the well.

Then the well caught fire and burned the wooden rig to the ground.

Some of the sour gas – laced with deadly amounts of hydrogen sulphide – was processed at the Turner Valley Gas Plant.

“The rest has been burned due mainly to the fact that we are afraid to hold a back pressure of more than 500 pounds.”

And so Hell’s Half Acre was born – a roaring flare into a coulee.

Six trucks – two working 24 hours a day – scurried back and forth, delivering gasoline to a tanker at the closest rail depot in Okotoks.

The company built a pipeline to Calgary.

By the fall of 1926 the Wonder Well was producing 575 barrels of gasoline per day – or more than 200,000 barrels a year.

100 more successful wells followed.

By 1942 Turner Valley was producing about 10 million barrels of oil per year.

Or more than 95 per cent of all the oil in Canada.

SAVE THE DATE – MAY 14, 2014 – for a BIG PARTY!

We are counting down to the 100th anniversary of the discovery of oil in Alberta – just upstream from Black Diamond at Turner Valley.

Watch for more stories about how oil changed the province, and Canada, forever.

21 weeks and counting!