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Posted by George (Alberta) on Saturday, March 01, 2008 at 00:01:34 :
In Reply to: Re: President Bush should come to the Adirondack Mts posted by Rex on Friday, February 29, 2008 at 12:48:14 :
FROM WIKI Petrolia (2006 population 5,222)[1] is a town in Ontario, Canada, near Sarnia, Ontario. It is billed as "Canada's Victorian Oil Town" and is often credited with starting the world oil industry.
In 1857 James Miller Williams of Hamilton, Ontario began distilling some of the "tar" lying around Oil Springs (located a few kilometers down the road), after buying the property rights from Charles Nelson Tripp. In 1858 he struck an oil deposit in Oil Springs while digging a water well, sparking the oil drilling industry. This resulted in a large amount of wastage from gushers, estimated at 5,000,000 barrels of oil in 1862 alone.[2]
Oil production went through several boom periods in Petrolia, one was in 1898 and another in 1938. Some wells sunk in 1938 were initially producing 100 barrels a day at a price of $2 per barrel. This output, however, often lasted only a few weeks, falling to less than a barrel a day. [3]
Oil men from Petrolia travelled to the far reaches of the world (Gobi Desert, Arctic, Iran, Indonesia, USA, Australia, Russia, and over 80 other countries) teaching others how to find and extract crude oil. Those born and raised in Petrolia are referred to as "Hard Oilers", paying tribute to the toughness of its ancestors. Petrolia is also home to the Petrolia Discovery museum. Oil fields in the area are still pumping there to this day.