Lithium

Collaboration overview

In the area where Imperial discovered oil 76 years ago, we are excited to announce a collaboration with E3 Lithium that will explore the redevelopment of the Leduc oil field into a potential leading source of lithium for Canada’s growing minerals industry.

This pilot project will support E3 Lithium’s Clearwater project, which will draw lithium from under the Leduc oil field – Imperial’s 1947 discovery that first launched major oil and gas development in Western Canada.

E3 announced that commissioning of the field pilot plant was completed, and that operations had begun, on August 29, 2023.

watch the video

Unlocking this valuable resource by leveraging game-changing lithium recovery technology, demonstrates how we continue to lean in on innovation to support Canada’s energy transition.

Jason Iwanika

Imperial's director of commercial business development

Historic perspective

Turner Valley

Turner Valley

In the 1920’s, Imperial turned to the Prairies in search of oil. In 1921, it acquired the Dingman company in Turner Valley and reorganized it as the Royalite Oil Company Limited.

Royalite remained an Imperial subsidiary until it was sold in 1949 to help finance Imperial’s postwar expansion.

Royalite hit pay dirt in 1924 with its Royalite No. 4 well, which roared n with a daily production of about 24 million cubic feet of gas impregnated with light oil, setting off the second Turney Valley boom. Other companies drilled in the area and found more oil.

But although a steady flow of oil was pumped from Turner Valley to Regina and Calgary right into the 1940s it wasn’t nearly enough. By the mid-1940s more than 90 per cent of Canada’s crude oil was being imported, and Imperial had almost decided that finding new oil sources in western Canada was a lost cause. Since 1919 the company had spent about $23 million on exploration, sending geologists, seismograph crews and drillers from Manitoba to the Rockies. Little of consequence had been found since Turner Valley. Imperial had drilled 133 consecutive holes throughout the West – all of them dry.

^{Image to right: "Construction foreman checking huge valve on Imperial Oil's eight-mile pipeline from Leduc oil fields to railhead at Nisku, Alberta.", 1947, (CU1557215) by Unknown. Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.}
Bleak Prairie outlook

Bleak Prairie outlook

So bleak was the situation that the company was even considering making gasoline from natural gas to supply the Prairie demand.

It was only with the greatest reluctance that in 1946 Imperial management yielded to the urgings of its exploration department and sanctioned the drilling of a series of “last-chance” holes. When several wells failed to find anything encouraging, Imperial decided to drill one more exploratory well on the farmland of a grain farmer, Mike Turta, just outside the small town of Leduc, southwest of Edmonton. Drilling started on November 20, 1946.

Early in the new year, samples from the well suggested a healthy reservoir of gas and oil. “It was the most encouragement we’d had outside Turner Valley,” recalled a driller. By then the news had leaked beyond the company. Imperial’s public relations department convinced management to take an audacious step: to name the specific date when the wildcat well would actually come into production and invite the press and public to view it.
February 13, 1947

February 13, 1947

On the afternoon of February 13 1947, several hundred spectators gathered, chilled to the bone by the crisp winter cold. Every eye was glued to the towering derrick.

On the drill-rig floor an Imperial crew worked feverishly to overcome a last-minute breakdown and to present the show they were sure – well, almost sure – was about to begin. At four o’clock they pulled up the fourth swab (a kind of piston that is lowered down the pipe, then pulled back up, drawing oil, water and mud with it). A driller shouted: “Here she comes! It’s oil!”

The well began to spurt, the muddy black flow gushed out into a sump pit, and the spectators (most of whom had never seen an oil well before), edged nervously away. Then, with the turn of a valve, the flow was switched to a flare pipe 180 metres away. A driller lit some oil-soaked sacking tied to a long rope, twirled it around his head like a lasso and let it fly at the pit. With a roar and a whoosh the flare pipe caught fire, and flames leaped 15 metres, burning off the first mud polluted oil. Leduc No. 1 was a winner. “It was as though a prince had been born,” declared an exuberant employee.

^{Image to left: "Opening day, Imperial Leduc #1 discovery well, Leduc, Alberta.", 1947-02-13, (CU1554622) by Pollard, Harry. Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.}
The turning point

The turning point

Seldom in history can the turning point in the fortunes of an industry be pinpointed so accurately as in the case of Imperial’s 1947 Leduc discovery.

Canada’s emergence as a major oil-producing nation can truly be said to date from this time. The field was a spectacular success, having produced more than 200 million barrels of oil. But its greatest contribution was the encouragement it gave the industry and the impetus it gave the nation’s economy. The field provided the first conclusive evidence of rich oil-bearing Devonian reef structures in Canada and paved the way for the subsequent discovery of a whole chain of these structures in the West.

In the years that followed the Leduc discovery new fields with romantic frontier names were found in steady procession: Redwater, Golden Spike, Pembina, Judy Creek, Boundary Lake. Oil was found in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia. The major discoveries alone accounted for about seven billion barrels of crude oil between 1947 and 1957 in western Canada.

Turner Valley

In the 1920’s, Imperial turned to the Prairies in search of oil. In 1921, it acquired the Dingman company in Turner Valley and reorganized it as the Royalite Oil Company Limited.

Royalite remained an Imperial subsidiary until it was sold in 1949 to help finance Imperial’s postwar expansion.

Royalite hit pay dirt in 1924 with its Royalite No. 4 well, which roared n with a daily production of about 24 million cubic feet of gas impregnated with light oil, setting off the second Turney Valley boom. Other companies drilled in the area and found more oil.

But although a steady flow of oil was pumped from Turner Valley to Regina and Calgary right into the 1940s it wasn’t nearly enough. By the mid-1940s more than 90 per cent of Canada’s crude oil was being imported, and Imperial had almost decided that finding new oil sources in western Canada was a lost cause. Since 1919 the company had spent about $23 million on exploration, sending geologists, seismograph crews and drillers from Manitoba to the Rockies. Little of consequence had been found since Turner Valley. Imperial had drilled 133 consecutive holes throughout the West – all of them dry.

^{Image to right: "Construction foreman checking huge valve on Imperial Oil's eight-mile pipeline from Leduc oil fields to railhead at Nisku, Alberta.", 1947, (CU1557215) by Unknown. Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.}

Bleak Prairie outlook

So bleak was the situation that the company was even considering making gasoline from natural gas to supply the Prairie demand.

It was only with the greatest reluctance that in 1946 Imperial management yielded to the urgings of its exploration department and sanctioned the drilling of a series of “last-chance” holes. When several wells failed to find anything encouraging, Imperial decided to drill one more exploratory well on the farmland of a grain farmer, Mike Turta, just outside the small town of Leduc, southwest of Edmonton. Drilling started on November 20, 1946.

Early in the new year, samples from the well suggested a healthy reservoir of gas and oil. “It was the most encouragement we’d had outside Turner Valley,” recalled a driller. By then the news had leaked beyond the company. Imperial’s public relations department convinced management to take an audacious step: to name the specific date when the wildcat well would actually come into production and invite the press and public to view it.

February 13, 1947

On the afternoon of February 13 1947, several hundred spectators gathered, chilled to the bone by the crisp winter cold. Every eye was glued to the towering derrick.

On the drill-rig floor an Imperial crew worked feverishly to overcome a last-minute breakdown and to present the show they were sure – well, almost sure – was about to begin. At four o’clock they pulled up the fourth swab (a kind of piston that is lowered down the pipe, then pulled back up, drawing oil, water and mud with it). A driller shouted: “Here she comes! It’s oil!”

The well began to spurt, the muddy black flow gushed out into a sump pit, and the spectators (most of whom had never seen an oil well before), edged nervously away. Then, with the turn of a valve, the flow was switched to a flare pipe 180 metres away. A driller lit some oil-soaked sacking tied to a long rope, twirled it around his head like a lasso and let it fly at the pit. With a roar and a whoosh the flare pipe caught fire, and flames leaped 15 metres, burning off the first mud polluted oil. Leduc No. 1 was a winner. “It was as though a prince had been born,” declared an exuberant employee.

^{Image to left: "Opening day, Imperial Leduc #1 discovery well, Leduc, Alberta.", 1947-02-13, (CU1554622) by Pollard, Harry. Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.}

The turning point

Seldom in history can the turning point in the fortunes of an industry be pinpointed so accurately as in the case of Imperial’s 1947 Leduc discovery.

Canada’s emergence as a major oil-producing nation can truly be said to date from this time. The field was a spectacular success, having produced more than 200 million barrels of oil. But its greatest contribution was the encouragement it gave the industry and the impetus it gave the nation’s economy. The field provided the first conclusive evidence of rich oil-bearing Devonian reef structures in Canada and paved the way for the subsequent discovery of a whole chain of these structures in the West.

In the years that followed the Leduc discovery new fields with romantic frontier names were found in steady procession: Redwater, Golden Spike, Pembina, Judy Creek, Boundary Lake. Oil was found in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and British Columbia. The major discoveries alone accounted for about seven billion barrels of crude oil between 1947 and 1957 in western Canada.

Alberta Canada's first brine production wells

Lithium rich brine

• Production of brine from the Leduc Reservoir
• Lithium concentration 75 mg/L
• Closed loop system: 100% re-injection of brine

Brine production

• Production of brine from the Leduc Reservoir
• Lithium concentration 75 mg/L
• Closed loop system: 100% re-injection of brine

Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology

• Pre-treatment of brine before entering the DLE plant
• DLE technology generates a high purity lithium concentrate solution

Re-injection

Concentrated Li

LiOH refinement

Refinement of the lithium concentrate into battery quality lithium hydroxide for direct sales to battery manufacturers

Sustainability

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