In connection with their prospecting, mining and boring operations in Athabaska district Mr. von Hamerstein’s parties use quantities of natural gas for lighting purposes. They light their camps with it, and do their blacksmithing with it, and it comes in very handy. They get the gas at all kinds of depths, and get several veins of it. They never get petroleum without gas, as they have to strike gas before they strike petroleum, so there must be a large quantity of petroleum there.
According to Mr. von Hamerstein’s evidence upon this occasion, on Peace river there is evidence of natural gas also, small amounts of tar and also evidence of petroleum. That would be sixteen miles from Peace River Landing, on an island called Tar island. The natural gas springs there throw out small amounts of tar, and about thirty miles from the mouth, on the north shore, there is also a spring. It is what Mr. von Hamerstein called an oil spring or tar spring.
W. F. Bredin, M. L. A., before the Senate committee of 1907, stated that for miles along Athabaska river the natural gas is all the time escaping from the clay banks of the river and in the river itself, because all across the river you can see the bubbles rising. The witness had lighted some of the gas vents, and boiled his tea pail by hanging it over the flame.
More Important Gas Springs.
According to Mr. McConnell, the most important natural gas spring in the district occurs on the Athabaska at the mouth of Little Buffalo river. The gas here forces its way up from the tar sands, through two hundred and fifty feet of the Clearwater shales and issues from the surface in numerous small jets distributed over an area fifty feet or more in diameter. Some of the jets burn steadily when lighted, until extinguished by heavy rains or strong wind, and afford sufficient heat to cook a camp meal. A second spring was noticed on the left bank of the Athabaska about thirteen miles below the mouth of Pelican river. The volume of gas escaping here is less than at the mouth of Little Buffalo river, and in order to reach the surface it is obliged to penetrate five hundred and seventy feet of shales and sandstone which here overlie the tar sands. Escaping jets of gas were also noted at several points farther up the river; but these were mostly small and may possibly be due to decaying vegetable matter. On Peace river natural gas issues from the tar springs on Tar island, in small quantities.
Mr. McConnell adds:—“The natural gas springs have less value in themselves at present than in the indications they afford of the existence of petroleum beneath.”
In his introduction to Mr. G. A. Young’s descriptive sketch of the geology and economic minerals of Canada (1909) Mr. R. W. Brock, Director of the Geological Survey, wrote:—“Petroleum and natural gas are obtained in Ontario; Alberta is also producing a large quantity of gas, and will probably develop petroleum fields. . . . . The interior plain (of the Canadian northwest) is underlain for the most part by sedimentary rocks, chiefly of Cretaceous age, and containing coal, building stones, clays, and cement materials. Natural gas over wide areas and under great pressure has been tapped, and there is every indication of a large oil field in the northern portion, at least, of Alberta.”