Fort St. John - Stoddart Area An On-Going Petroleum Development Opportunity
Authors: Kuran G.J. 
Published: March 2010

Since the early 1950s, exploratory and development drilling has been continually rewarding within an 80 km radius of the city of Fort St. John, British Columbia. Although this drilling was originally gas-oriented, significant oil discoveries were made at Boundary Lake (Esso, 1957), Peejay (Sinclair Oil, 1959), Inga (Canadian Superior, 1965) and West Eagle (Scurry Rainbow, 1976). Scurry-Rainbow Oil Limited, now controlled by Home Oil Company Limited, has played an integral part in most of these field developments.

Until the early 1970s there were a limited number of wells immediately north of Fort St. John with the exception of the Stoddart Belloy gas pool which was discovered in 1957. The possibility of oil regionally down dip was evidenced by production from the Uno Tex wells in Section 31-85-19W6M and oil shows at the Sun 8-l4-85-19W6M and Centrai Del Rio ll-29-84-18W6M wells (Fig. I). Although Triassic reservoirs have produced the majority of B.C.'s oil reserves to date, the Belloy (Permian) is now gaining importance as a major producing horizon (Table 1).

Scurry-Rainbow's first well was drilled in 1971 on a farmout from Great Northern Oil Limited (6-3l-84-17W6M), exploring for what was hoped to be a regional extension of the Stoddart Belloy gas pool. Although the Belloy was tight at the location, a porous gas bearing Triassic North Pine sand was encountered, thus discovering the Cecil North Pine "A" gas pool.

Further delineation drilling in 1972 confirmed the extent of the gas discovery, as well as proving the existence of an oil leg to the pool.

ncouraged by the results of the North Pine drilling, Scurry- Rainbow and Placer CEGO Petroleum stepped out approximately mid-way between the originaI6-31-84-17W6M well and the Central Del Rio Belloy oil show at 11-29-84-18W6M, and discovered what is now known as the Eagle Belloy "B" pool in 1973 (6-27-84-18W6M). With attention then concentrated on extending the trend northwest back to the Uno Tex Stoddart wells discoveries were made at West Eagle, (Belloy "A" pool 1976) West Stoddart (Belloy "C" pool, 1977) and South Stoddart (Belloy "C" 1979).

Undoubtedly, the most significant of these discoveries was the West Eagle field (6-36-84-19W6M). Subsequent to step-out drilling by other independent operators, early indications of the possible major size of the Belloy "A" pool sparked a flurry of lease acquisition of both Crown acreage and some of the only freehold acreage in British Columbia. Once most of the favourable acreage had been leased surrounding the discovery, development drilling began in earnest during 1977.

By the end of 1980, sixty-seven wells had been drilled into the Belloy "A" pool. As the pool did not have either a natural water drive or a significant gas cap, reservoir pressures declined rapidly from 16742 kPa (2428 psi) in 1976 to 15 200 kPa (2204 psi) in 1980. The B.C. Petroleum Resources Division and the operators agreed that waterflood operations should commence as soon as possible. To that end, the pool was unitized with Scurry-Rainbow as operator and injection operations began prior to the end of 1980.