Oil and its
Manitobans
Since the Manitoba Act of 1870, surveyors had been looking in Manitoba for the black gold of oil. Eventually they found what they were seeking when the first successful Manitoba well was drilled and came up with oil, gas and water in 1950. Since then, wells have been drilled and lives have been entangled with the boom-and-bust economy that is oil and gas extraction. These are stories of those lives, those wells and the relationships of Manitobans to their oil.
Explore MOMIC
MOMIC
The Manitoba Oil Museum and Interpretive Centre (MOMIC) was developed by a group of people around Virden, Manitoba in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s to celebrate and promote oil extraction in Manitoba. Some of these people were land owners, industry workers, regulators, hotel owners, and restaurant or grocery store owners but they had a common connecting thread; they directly or indirectly benefited from the oil extraction industry. The MOMIC board collected documents, photos and models; a few of which are visible on this MOMIC page. The hope is that, overtime, more of the physical archives will be available to the public through this website.
Surface Rights
There are a few key determining factors of oil extraction which relate to the establishment of property rights through the Dominion Lands Survey, eventually leading to Surface Rights, Mineral Rights, and Royalty Rates. Here are some stories of landowners working to create the Manitoba Surface Rights Association (MSRA) to create the Manitoba Surface Rights Act and Surface Rights Board in the 1970s.
GASPE
This is a story about a group of people in southwestern Manitoba who struggled to deal with some of the toxic gases that arise from oil extraction processes, particularly H2S. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s they created this non-for-profit organization (GASPE) and worked to lobby the government for regulatory changes.
Fracking
There are many actors, components and factors that come together to allow oil (and/or natural gas) to be extracted or produced from an area. This exhibit features some of the nuts and bolts of these things in Manitoba.
Resources
This is only the beginning. Here we acknowledge where we are, thank those who have contributed already, and indicate where we hope to go. Click the "explore" button for further information.
Map
This is an overview of some of the current infrastructure of oil and gas extraction in Manitoba and an example of the GIS maps created by the Manitoba Petroleum Branch. This map displays the well sites as small dots, with the straight lines extended from many of the well sites, as the general direction of the horizontally drilled wells. These horizontal lines are found deep beneath the surface and are only a small aspect of the underground infrastructure of oil and gas that includes numerous connecting pipelines.