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Canol Project
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Canol Project
The Canol Project was an oil pipeline project constructed during World War II to ensure a supply of oil for the defense of Alaska and the North American west coast. The project included a section of crude petroleum transport by barge, a refinery, and a 4-inch pipeline. It was completed in two years at great cost and was abandoned less than a year later.
The entry of the United States in World War II highlighted the strategic role and vulnerability of Alaska. Military operations in Alaska depended on fuel transported by sea from the U.S. West Coast, and the U.S. Army became increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of that supply line to Japanese attacks, particularly after the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands and the attack on the Ellwood Oil Field in Southern California.
The construction of infrastructure to Alaska from Norman Wells was first raised by the arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who proposed a water connection from the railhead at Waterways, Alberta to Norman Wells, and then a road to Fairbanks via Dawson City as an alternative to the Alaska Highway. Claims for oil in the Norman Wells area were first staked in 1914 by the geologist T.O. Bosworth, and they were subsequently acquired by Imperial Oil, which drilled three producing wells and built a small refinery by 1924. Local demand was so small that refinery soon closed, but it re-opened in the early 1930s to supply the Eldorado Mine at Port Radium.
The order to construct a pipeline from Norman Wells to Whitehorse was issued by Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell, head of the Construction Division of the Quartermaster Corps, based on the recommendation of Colonel James Graham, the Dean of Engineering at the University of Kentucky. Graham based his recommendation on a one-day conference he organized, attended mostly by Army officials, where no one present was familiar with the area the pipeline was to be built. Somervill's directive set the completion date for the project as 1 October 1942, a mere six months after the order was issued, although Somervill later told a U.S. Senate Committee reviewing the project that at the time he thought the project might actually be completed by the summer of 1943. The US War Department decided to construct the project in April 1942 and it was assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
W.A. Bechtel Co, H. Price & Co. and W. E. Callahan Construction Co. formed a consortium to construct the project. Known as Bechtel-Price-Callahan (BPC) it also included six associated companies. Standard Oil Company was a consultant on the project and would operate the refinery in Whitehorse. Imperial Oil owned the Norman Wells field and would be responsible for the supply of oil. J. Gordon Turnbull and Sverdrup and Parcel were chosen to the project's architect and engineer of record.
The eventual scope of the project included:
In 1942, non-indigenous people had limited knowledge of the area between Norman Wells and Whitehorse, as the Mountain Dene or Shutagot'ine would come down from the mountains to trade with settlers along the Mackenzie River. BPC hired a land surveyor named Guy Blanchet to identify a route. Interviews with Dene from Fort Norman (now Tulita) identified a trail through the Mackenzie Mountains that was the most suitable, and in October 1942 Blanchet, four guides from Fort Norman (Fred Andrew, Little Edward Blondin, George Blondin, and Paul Wright) and two others set out by dog sled to survey the route that would eventually become the crossing of the pipeline over the Mackenzie Mountains. (though construction on the road had already begun by then) Subsequent surveys along this route by teams using heavy equipment were abandoned as the extreme cold caused machinery to fail. While there were several aerial photo projects, they were inconsistent and it is not clear how much they were used to guide location. Typically, much of the route decisions were made during construction, resulting in numerous "false starts" and reroutes of the road.
Much of the pipeline and equipment for the eastern section of Canol No.1 was moved by rail to Waterways, Alberta (today a suburb of Fort McMurray), where it was transferred to barges to take it up the Athabasca River. The Army was initially unaware that the unnavigable Slave Rapids made navigation to Great Slave Lake impossible, and barges had to be portaged by truck from Fort Fitzgerald to Fort Smith. Once the Mackenzie River froze over, the army constructed an ice road to Norman Wells.
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Canol Project
The Canol Project was an oil pipeline project constructed during World War II to ensure a supply of oil for the defense of Alaska and the North American west coast. The project included a section of crude petroleum transport by barge, a refinery, and a 4-inch pipeline. It was completed in two years at great cost and was abandoned less than a year later.
The entry of the United States in World War II highlighted the strategic role and vulnerability of Alaska. Military operations in Alaska depended on fuel transported by sea from the U.S. West Coast, and the U.S. Army became increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of that supply line to Japanese attacks, particularly after the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands and the attack on the Ellwood Oil Field in Southern California.
The construction of infrastructure to Alaska from Norman Wells was first raised by the arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who proposed a water connection from the railhead at Waterways, Alberta to Norman Wells, and then a road to Fairbanks via Dawson City as an alternative to the Alaska Highway. Claims for oil in the Norman Wells area were first staked in 1914 by the geologist T.O. Bosworth, and they were subsequently acquired by Imperial Oil, which drilled three producing wells and built a small refinery by 1924. Local demand was so small that refinery soon closed, but it re-opened in the early 1930s to supply the Eldorado Mine at Port Radium.
The order to construct a pipeline from Norman Wells to Whitehorse was issued by Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell, head of the Construction Division of the Quartermaster Corps, based on the recommendation of Colonel James Graham, the Dean of Engineering at the University of Kentucky. Graham based his recommendation on a one-day conference he organized, attended mostly by Army officials, where no one present was familiar with the area the pipeline was to be built. Somervill's directive set the completion date for the project as 1 October 1942, a mere six months after the order was issued, although Somervill later told a U.S. Senate Committee reviewing the project that at the time he thought the project might actually be completed by the summer of 1943. The US War Department decided to construct the project in April 1942 and it was assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
W.A. Bechtel Co, H. Price & Co. and W. E. Callahan Construction Co. formed a consortium to construct the project. Known as Bechtel-Price-Callahan (BPC) it also included six associated companies. Standard Oil Company was a consultant on the project and would operate the refinery in Whitehorse. Imperial Oil owned the Norman Wells field and would be responsible for the supply of oil. J. Gordon Turnbull and Sverdrup and Parcel were chosen to the project's architect and engineer of record.
The eventual scope of the project included:
In 1942, non-indigenous people had limited knowledge of the area between Norman Wells and Whitehorse, as the Mountain Dene or Shutagot'ine would come down from the mountains to trade with settlers along the Mackenzie River. BPC hired a land surveyor named Guy Blanchet to identify a route. Interviews with Dene from Fort Norman (now Tulita) identified a trail through the Mackenzie Mountains that was the most suitable, and in October 1942 Blanchet, four guides from Fort Norman (Fred Andrew, Little Edward Blondin, George Blondin, and Paul Wright) and two others set out by dog sled to survey the route that would eventually become the crossing of the pipeline over the Mackenzie Mountains. (though construction on the road had already begun by then) Subsequent surveys along this route by teams using heavy equipment were abandoned as the extreme cold caused machinery to fail. While there were several aerial photo projects, they were inconsistent and it is not clear how much they were used to guide location. Typically, much of the route decisions were made during construction, resulting in numerous "false starts" and reroutes of the road.
Much of the pipeline and equipment for the eastern section of Canol No.1 was moved by rail to Waterways, Alberta (today a suburb of Fort McMurray), where it was transferred to barges to take it up the Athabasca River. The Army was initially unaware that the unnavigable Slave Rapids made navigation to Great Slave Lake impossible, and barges had to be portaged by truck from Fort Fitzgerald to Fort Smith. Once the Mackenzie River froze over, the army constructed an ice road to Norman Wells.