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Alberta will probably release gas for export soon, setting off a rush of pipeline building that will rival the railroad era. Edmonton is already flooded with applications to pipe Alberta gas to eastern Canada, the Canadian West Coast and the U.S. Pacific Northwest. Delhi Oil Corp. of Dallas has bid to build a $253 million pipeline from Princess, Alta. to Montreal, a distance 400 miles longer than the world's longest pipeline (1,840 miles), from Rio Grande to New York.
Oil Exported. Enthusiastic oilmen envision the Alberta of the future as a northern Texas whose oil and gas pipelines will fan out over the top half of the continent, driving the expanding industries of Canada and the northern U.S. as the oil and gas of Texas now power the South and East. Such a development would make a blockaded North America largely self-sufficient in petroleum in case of war.
As yet Alberta's production (28 million bbls. in 1950) is a splash in the tank compared to Texas' 1950 output (933 million). But the vision of Alberta's future is not farfetched. Area alone is not a definitive factor, of course, but Alberta's oil lands are larger than Texas' great oil basin. And in the north are the great Athabaska tar sands, where an estimated 200 billion bbls. of oil, more than double the world's known reserve, lie locked in an asphalt-like sand-bed. Already, Alberta oil is flowing fast enough to fill a third of Canada's needs. It is pipelined across the continent for industrial Ontario; soon, through refineries at Superior and Duluth, it will pour into the oil-hungry areas of Wisconsin and Minnesota. And all this has been accomplished in four years, with only the first big gush from the wells. For Alberta, the brimming best is yet to come.