Panarctic Wildcat Gas Well, Jackson Bay, off Ellef Ringnes Island, N.W.T., April 1976.
In future decades, much of Canada's anticipated conventional oil needs will likely come from the Mackenzie Delta, the arctic islands and offshore areas of Labrador and Newfoundland. Some drilling began in the arctic islands in the early 1960s under early Calgary oil entrepreneurs such as J.C. Sproule and Associates, Peter Bawden Drilling, and Dome Petroleum. This led to the formation of the Panarctic Oil consortium on 27 May 1966, which received substantial support and exploration incentives from the federal government, and in 1981 was 53 per cent owned by Petro-Canada. Panarctic's first wells were on Melville Island, and by 1982 it had drilled 160 wells leading to gas reserves estimated to be some 504 billion cubic metres. On the basis of such exploratory and discovery wells the Geological Survey of Canada estimated natural gas reserves in the arctic islands to be 6.7 trillion cubic metres. Subsequently, other major oil companies invested heavily in arctic oil exploration and Dome Petroleum became a leader in the Beaufort Sea exploration of the mid-seventies.
