was removed and another put in its place. The dull bit was heated red hot, the point reshaped with a 10-pound sledge and finally tempered by a tool dresser.
The cable rig has largely been superseded by the faster, bigger, more expensive rotary drill rigs.
Using rotary drills a well is bored into the earth by rotating a sharp hollow circular bit fastened to a string of connected drill pipe, which is revolved by a rotary table in the derrick floor. The draw works turns the table by a chain drive and can rotate more than 300 tons of drilling pipe, at the rate of up to 200 revolutions a minute.
The long string of drill pipe is hollow through its entire length, to permit the pumping through of chemically treated “mud,” to flush out the cuttings of rock, lubricate the bit and contain the oil, gas and water pressures that are encountered. In a continous circuit from the mud tanks to the slush pumps to the fleixible hose, which introduces the mud into the pipe, the mud is pumped under high pressure through the bit, up through the space between the outside of the drill pipe and the wall of the hole and back to the tanks.
To facilitate coupling and uncoupling, since the drill string must be pulled out of the well many times to change bits or to insert a tubular lining of steel casing, the pipe is threaded together, usually in 30-foot lengths, which are added singly as the well deepens. The drill pipe is pulled out in sections and a section may range from one length to five lengths. It is the length of sections, by which pipe will be pulled out, that determines the height of the derrick. The tallest derricks are more than 200 feet high, as tall as a 15-storey building.
The drilling pipe actually “hangs” from the top of the derrick. The nerve centre of the rig is the draw works. This is essentially a powerful winch, with a huge drum on which the hoisting cable is spooled. From it the cable is strung through the sheaves of a crown block, at the top of the derrick and the suspended travelling block.
In the biggest derricks, the travelling blocks weigh seven tons, the hook four tons and the derrick’s frame of prefabricated steel 40 tons. The derrick is built strong enough so it will hoist and control 40 tons.
An explanation about one of the dangers of gas drilling, especially in Alberta, from Tiny Phillips’ scribbler:
“In the early days, the drillers often had inadequate tools to cope with high gas pressures. Control was necessary to prevent fires.
“When I would shut a gate on a well and see the pressure run up to 3,000 pounds per square inch — a pressure so high I couldn’t open it by hand — I was about ready to run.
“At times the expansion pressure on the pipes would be so great that within the space of a minute they would become coated with ice.”
When Tiny and Frosty left for Langham, Tiny’s scribbler showed: “I had never heard of Saskatchewan and Alberta before — until Coste showed us the location on a map. He made an agreement to buy our drill rig and pay our expenses, from the time we left Findlay until we returned. The ironic part of this deal is we never returned to Findlay permanently.
“We took our wives but the only place for them in this small Prairie town, was a big boarding house which provided overnight accommodation for cow punchers and travellers. When the weather was still warm, they could live in a tent in the field but when it got cold, they had to move back to Langham.
“This big-sky country and its possibilities intrigued us. The people did, too. The most unique we ran into were the Doukhobors who were brought in from Russia by Interior Minister Clifford Sifton to colonize the West.
“But they would take off on religious pilgrimages, leaving their livestock to run loose. The radical Sons of Freedom sect were always protesting something or other. And the way they attracted attention to the cause, was to strip naked and terrorize people by setting fire to their homes.
“One husky Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant told me, one has never done a real day’s work until he has tried to wrestle a naked 300-pound Doukhobor woman onto a CPR train to send the protesters home.”
Tiny and Frosty worked on the well until the summer of 1906. Delays had been experienced in rail delivery of pipe. But when they reached the 1,358-foot depth and hadn’t brought in oil, Coste closed down the job.
Chapter 7
29 Million Cubic Feet a Day
When he shut down this project, Coste had other things in mind for them. He asked them to go to Medicine Hat, Alberta, in the late summer of 1906, to work on a wildcat drilling contract for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Frosty became field superintendent and Tiny head driller. The culmination of this venture was the first big natural gas discovery in Alberta, when Old Glory was drilled near Bow Island in 1908-9. Oil was not found in commercial quantities here.
Generally lost sight of in this drilling project, was the fact a number of smaller commercial gas finds were brought in at Dunmore, Cummings, Suffield, Brooks and Bassano.
Their contract with Coste allowed Frosty and Tiny to do some freelance work. Between the time they arrived in Medicine Hat and the bringing in of Old Glory, they had drilled five gas wells for J.D. McGregor of the Grand Forks Cattle Company, who had an 80,000-acre grazing lease near Medicine Hat. This lease was later expanded to 380,000 acres through his participation in the Southern Alberta Land Company. His idea was to use cheap natural gas to operate huge pumps, to lift water 300 feet over the banks of the Bow and Belly Rivers to an extensive irrigation system, in this semi-arid short-grass prairie. He had been persuaded by Coste there was sufficient gas to achieve this purpose. There was — but the cable tool rigs were not capable of reaching enough of it to do the job.
McGregor toyed with the idea of tapping into larger constant gas reserves around Medicine Hat, but eventually the concept was dropped as there was no guarantee of continuity of supply.
Despite the failure of finding enough gas for this purpose, McGregor and the SAL continued the wildcat drilling program. Up to 1914, $127,000 had been spent.
From the very first he had pushed a scheme to build an electric railway from Medicine Hat to Calgary via Suffield, Ronalane, Retlaw, Milo, Arrowwood and Aldersyde. Once again he planned to use gas for power generation. The Phillips’ scribbler notes:
James Duncan McGregor (1860-1935). Cattleman extraordinaire who, in 1929 at the age of 69, was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta. Photo: Western Canada Pictorial Index.
McGregor and his brother, Colin, were obsessed about electric railways as a quick, effective means of transportation for farmers. At one point construction bonds had been guaranteed. Not only that, but a successful well was brought in on Colin’s farm at 2,177 feet. On it were based the hopes of supplying power for the electric railway and for the proposed townsite of Ronalane nearby. Neither ever got past the planning stages. Later the CPR built a branchline over the right-of-way McGregor acquired.
That left him with quantities of gas, which were developed for heating homes.
When McGregor’s grand idea didn’t pan out, necessity sent the SAL 150 miles up the Bow River to build a diversion works at Carseland. Bow River water was sent coursing through an immense canal system; dumped back into the river at Ronalane.
Tiny and Frosty had more success in drilling under the CPR contract. Based on the success of the Colin McGregor well north of the river, they decided to drill for the
