PETEOLEUM IN ONTAEIO. Ill 



been found by experience that it is seldom worth penetrating more than 135 ieet into it. 

 In Sarnia township, the drift clay is 145 feet deep, but the oil is met with at 385 feet from 

 the surface, or only 240 feet in the rock, instead of 360, as at Petrolia, shewing that 

 more of the solid strata had been denuded away in Sarnia than at Petrolia before the clay 

 was deposited. 



The wells are bored by tubing the drift deposits, so as to shut off the surface water, 

 when the work of boring in the solid rock is begun — the moti^'e power being a small 

 engine. The drilling apparatus is suspended by wooden rods, which constitute the 

 peculiar, and, it is claimed, a siiperior feature, of the Canadian method, which is now in 

 universal use in this country. The rods, which are of hard wood, measure 18 feet in 

 length, and two of them fastened together, end to end, make what is called a " length." The 

 lengths are joined to each other by a tapering screw at the one end, fitting into a corres- 

 ponding threaded socket at the end of the next. They last throughout two or three years of 

 constant use, although unscrewed and screwed together again very frequently. The rods 

 are withdrawn from or lowered into the hole by means of a derrick, and latterly by a tall 

 tripod, erected OA'er the well. Boring for oil has developed into an established trade, and 

 about 100 skilled men are employed in it. The process has become so systematised and 

 cheapened that it costs only about $400, and requires but one week, working day and 

 night, to sink an average well at Petrolia. Mr. "W. K. Gibson, an oil merchant, of that 

 town, informed me that 2,392 wells had been in operation at Oil Springs, Petrolia, and in 

 Sarnia Township, in 1885, but that 193 of these had been shut down during the year, 

 leaving 2,199 in operation on December 31st. The writer is indebted to Mr. James Kerr, 

 the obliging secretary of the Petrolia Oil Exchange, for most of the following .«statistics. 

 He states the number of wells which had been pumped in 1886 at nearly 2,600, and the 

 number of new wells sunk during the year at about 200. Some 500 of the above wells 

 are situated around Oil Springs. For the last few years, the proportion of successful wells 

 to the "dry holes," or those not worth pumping, has been 80 per cent. In the early days 

 of the industry a separate engine was used to pump each well, but now, by an ingenious 

 contrivance of rods and cranks, called "jerkers," 20 to 40, and even 50 wells, are pumped 

 by one engine, and this of much smaller power than would be supposed necessary. In 

 one case, Mr. Englehart worked no fewer than *70 wells with a single engine by this means, 

 The rods, which are small, are made of hard wood, spliced together with iron, and, in order 

 to diminish friction, they are hung from a horizontal wooden rail about four feet from the 

 ground, by means of very light iron suspenders, which swing backward and forward 

 with each stroke of the engine. The direction of the force is changed, whenever required, 

 by means of horizontal cranks. With such economy in the cost of pumping, it has become 

 possible to work profitably wells which yield only small quantities of oil. Indeed, in 1886, 

 the average production per well per day in the Petrolia region was only twenty-three 

 imperial gallons, or not much more than half-a-barrel. The ten largest wells in the district 

 furnished an average of twenty barrels each, of thirty-five imperial gallons, per day. In 

 1886 the total quantity of crude oil produced in the entire region was 5Y6,000 barrels of 

 the above capacity ; and of this amount, Oil Springs contributed 180,000 barrels. At the 

 latter place the yield diminished rapidly from 1860, the time of the discovery of the 

 spouting wells, till 1865, when operations ceased, and nothing was done for sixteen years. 

 But, in 1881, some of the old wells were revived by means of torpedoes ; new wells were 



