THE LEDUC OIL FIELDA talk by V.H. Hunter, Toolpush of the Leduc #1 WellManager, Regina Producing Division,Imperial Oil Limited.Before we leave on our tour of the Leduc field thisafternoon we felt you might be interested in hearing alittle about the things you are going to see.I might say first a few words about the town of Devon. Backin 1947 this location was a barley field. Incidentally, itwasn't a very good barley field by crop standards aroundhere, because it is too close to the river and the soil ispretty sandy. However it makes a good town site. The townwas sponsored originally by Imperial Oil but it is now fullyincorporated with its own mayor and council.One stop you will make this afternoon is at Imperial LeducNo. 1, the discovery well. I can tell you from experiencethat you will be traveling on much better roads than we hadwhen we were drilling that hole. There really weren't anyroads. Trails would be a better word.By the time we got around to drilling other wells---ohbrother! We were mud to our eyebrows. We had to bring ourcasing in on stone boats hauled by "cats". We started inbuilding roads at the Nisku turn-off into this area (therewasn't any town here then, of course) and as more wells weredrilled more roads were built until the whole of Leduc-Woodbend field was a network of strong-if not alwayspavement smooth roads. This was a co-operative effortbetween the municipality and the oil industry.I should tell you a little bit about brining in Leduc No. 1.There is a time lag between the time you hit a rockformation bearing oil and the time the well is brought in.As a matter of fact the discovery date of a well is the dateit is put on production.When we struck oil-bearing rock and figured we really hadsomething at long last, I was asked when the well would comein. I said it would take about 10 days. That's the lasttime I'll ever predict when a well will go on production. Idiscovered that George Lawrence was going to have somegentlemen of the press and radio here to see it come in andso the date was something more than just academic interest.By the morning of February 13th-the date set-we hadn'tstarted to swab and that operation sometimes takes days.However, we crossed our fingers and at daylight started in.Swabbing is a technique for sucking the oil to the surfaceto start the well flowing. A swab looks like a safety cagefor an electric light with a rubber ring around it. Severalof these are run to the bottom of the production tubing on acable and then pulled back up slowly. I don't know whetherthe 13th had anything to do with it or we were in too muchof a hurry, but we snapped the shaft in the hoisting drum.We didn't have time to wait for repairs, so we had to laydown the traveling block, spool the drilling line off themain drum, cut off the 2,000 feet of sand line that was inthe hole and spool the rest off the broken hoist onto themain drum. Then we had to string the sand line over theCrown block at the top of the derrick, splice it back to theline in the hole and pull out the swab. We didn't want totake a chance on the splice so we ran off the 2,000 feet tothe splice and threw it away. Then we went back toswabbing.There's a lot of oil talk in a few breaths!