This Petro Ninja - Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week focuses on the Slave Point, the next rung on our climb up through the discoveries related to the Peace River Arch. The Slave Point is a reefal carbonate complex along the fringe of the Peace River Arch and is often in the shadow of the Swan Hills, its more prolific equivalent, which developed along the West Alberta Ridge. Beaverhill Lake schematic cross section showing relationship of Slave Point and Swan Hills to the

The story is often told of how Imperial Oil had drilled 133 dry holes in a row and was ready to give up on western Canada before the Leduc discovery in 1947. But that was the start of an age of discovery in Alberta. One Devonian reef pool after another. Then the Cardium in 1953. The hits kept coming. Oldale et al., 1994 One particular discovery in 1954 showed that they were on a roll: the Gilwood. A Basement test at 100/01-09-073-18W5/00 that found oil in fluvio-deltaic sa

To a large degree, the history of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin reflects its structural features - the West Alberta Ridge, the Meadow Lake Escarpment and the Sweetgrass Arch to name a few. But if someone says, “The Arch,” it is almost certainly the Peace River Arch they are referring to. The Arch defines the WCSB as much as any other feature. At its highest point, the Peace River Arch rose over a kilometre from the sea floor to emerge as a significant land mass. The

Last week, I closed out the resource play series emphasizing that it is the rocks that define our plays and how much more we need to learn about the subsurface. This week the Petro Ninja Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week introduces an intermittent series that will highlight wells illustrating the continuing imperative to understand the geology. Maybe these wells point out operational hazards. Other times the focus will be on exploration leads that could be followed up on.