Entrepreneurship

From the HERALD archives back to 1883

Over a hundred oil brokers have already taken out licences. The oil fever from which Calgary is suffering at the present time is being reflected very markedly at the city hall, where little business is being transacted, owing to the fact that people seem incapable of thinking and talking about anything but oil shares, leases, and prospects. The general rush to invest savings in oil shares and stocks is reflected in the receipts of the electric light department, where the revenue has fallen off about half, and it has been found necessary to put on a number of extra collectors to bring receipts up to the normal. The receipts in the water-works department shows a similar falling off.

Bonar A.(Sandy) Gow

Crude oil and wheat have long represented for eastern Canadians what Alberta is all about. Rotary drilling rigs, flare pits, pump jacks, and refineries have been blended together with golden wheat fields, combines and grain elevators in the minds of easterners until they have come to be seen as the key to Alberta's economic good fortune. In this there is the usual element of truth. But natural gas, like the less glamorous cereal grains, oats and barley, remains largely in the background; it does not come to the fore with the same frequency, nor does it evoke the same vivid imagery. Similarly, the evolution of gas technology does not attract quite the same attention or interest as the technology behind the extraction of oil from tar sands or new methods of drilling at odd angles or great depths.

EVOLUTION OF ROYALTIES

The original Oil Royalties are those reserved by the owner of the petroleum and natural gas rights underlying the tract under development. These, known as "Landowner's Gross Royalty", represent a stipulated percentage of the barrels produced, or the revenue therefrom, and are subject to no deductions whatsoever. They rank prior to all other interests in the well or tract.

This company began at the drill site of Dingman #1, (Alberta's first major gas discovery in 1914). It came about when Calgary Petroleum Product Company had only nine wells in operation by 1920, and produced just 66,000 barrels of natural gas in 10 years. That coupled with the fire that ripped through the absorption plant in October of that year. Being unable to pay the $50,000 repair bill sold its operations to Imperial Oil. Imperial Oil reorganized the company under the name Royalite Oil Company Ltd.

Photo Courtesy Glenbow Archives

Photo courtesy Glenbow Archives

Line-up of investors waiting their turn to buy stock, Calgary May 15th. Just after Dingman flows

WARNING this bottle contains genuine Canadian crude oil, not for human consumtion.

New Black Diamond Oil Company Limited Photo taken at the Interpretive Center

Prudential Oil and Gas Stock Certificate Photo taken at the Interpretive Center