Paul Guthrie
Involvement in the Oil Industry and Recollections
Paul's involvement in the drilling business started with water
wells in the late twenties. Paul and his brother drilled water wells all over the country.
All the way from Hardisty to Marwayne and into Saskatchewan. They were quite popular as
water well drillers, because they worked 24 hours a day until the well was completed.
A man by the name of O. C. Yates looked them up and followed them
around quite a bit. He was trying to put together a formation structure. With his work,
eventually the Lloydminster Gas Company was formed. They purchased an old, used cable tool
rig that was in the vicinity and hired Bill Scutchings. Bill Scutchings then hired Paul,
Ed Gantertin and Roy Hartling to help build the derrick which stood on the north end,
around the exhibition grounds. Paul recalls that one of the men worked on something else
for awhile when the derrick got a little high for him. Paul helped Charlie Mills rig up
the old cable tool rig they had purchased and the well spudded in. This was where he first
got to know Charlie Mills. Paul drilled the water well to provide water for the steam
boiler and he took stock in the Lloydminster Gas Company in lieu of cash. When the well
came in, they paid him two to one for the original price. He didn't have a dependent
family living in Lloydminster so he was able to work for shares, but some of the others
were getting a dollar a day to buy groceries.
He recalls that local people were financing the Lloydminster Gas
Company and the drilling of Lloydminster No. 1. Men like Jack Ranger and Charlie Elliott
were scraping up money to get another carload of coal. They were supposedly on their last
carload of coal when they hit gas. Those were touchy times.
Paul remembers when they found gas at Lloydminster's first well.
With that things leveled off, gas was piped into the town, which he recalls had a
population of under 2,000 at that time. People then went their various ways. Paul drifted
away from Lloydminster and back to Turner Valley and Taber, Alberta.
There was one incident with Charlie Mills, he said he
must mention, which may have been the most beneficial in his whole life. When they were
rigging up for the Discovery gas well they had to go to Dina, where he had previously
drilled a couple of wells for Charlie Mills. They had to go to get a different drill bit.
He's not sure if it was on loan or borrowed without permission. Whitey Wilson, who was in
charge of the tools at Dina, was away and they borrowed the bit. They put it on the back
bumper of Charlie Mills' old Diana car. It was pretty heavy and it made the front end
pretty light and it was hard to steer. With all the weight on the car they blew a tire on
Charlie's car. That was before the time of spare tires. You took the tire off the wheel,
got out your patches, cut a patch, put some paste on, partially dried it, stuck it on and
tried to put it all back together. The temperature that night was 60 degrees below zero
with some snow and a heavy wind blowing. Paul went into the bushes and tested the willows
until he found the dead ones. He picked up an armful, brought them back, dipped them into
the gas tank and then started a fire. Charlie got his hands warmed and they got the tire
fixed eventually and proceeded back into Lloydminster. They arrived at 6:00 in the
morning. A new restaurant had just opened and they were able to get coffee and breakfast.
They had been out in the storm for a good nine hours. Paul heard later that this story had
been repeated by Charlie Mills to some of his friends. He had made up his mind that he
would get Paul to run the rigs for him. Paul thinks it was a very important thing that he
did, but it was for their own salvation.
It was at Dina that Paul had also met Stuart Wright.
Paul was the first person to see the Sparky Sands. Charlie Mills had contracted to drill a
well to a certain depth and they had reached the contract depth. They were waiting for the
electrolog that was coming in the morning. When the electrolog people came, they pulled
the drill pipe out of the well. They had the core barrel which Paul insisted they use. The
core barrel was on the bottom and to clean out all the debris and make sure they were
completely to bottom, they cored an extra foot or foot and a half. While Schlumberger was
getting ready to run the electrolog Paul opened up the core barrel and found clean,
saturated oil sand. He called Charlie Mills and told him, they better core some more. The
contractors were ready so they went ahead and logged the well and nothing exciting turned
up above that, so they went ahead and put the core barrel back in and continued to core
into what is now known as the Sparky Sands. He met Dr. Edmunds from the University of
Saskatchewan. Professor Edmunds wanted to call it the Guthrie Sands, but some other
engineers in the field with Barlow Drilling and other companies were drilling into the
same field, so they settled for the name of the original well where the sand was found
Sparky No. 1. Sparky No. 1 was located four miles west and a couple miles south of Highway
16.
Professor Edmunds and Paul Guthrie were good friends and kind of
pioneered together. Paul calls Charlie Mills a prince. He thinks the hotel Prince Charles
was named for that reason.
In Taber he worked for Cantex drilling. He had a similar
experience in Taber to that he had in Lloydminster when they found the Sparky Sands.
It was in Turner Valley that Paul met and married Helen
Archibald. When he married Helen they moved into their one room shack in Longview on the
outskirts of Turner Valley. Two weeks after they were married, an old Diana car drove into
their yard and there was Charlie Mills. He talked Paul into pushing rigs for Northern
Development Company. He looks back at this as another turning point - he's had a lot of
good luck.
Paul was pushing the rig for Northern Development when they
drilled the first producing well in the Devonian field in the Devon area.
He comments that he was always over his head and he was ready to
listen and ask questions. It you can listen well, you can get by pretty well. In his
opinion, some people don't listen enough.
He met some very good men over the years and some who he showed
their first rotary drilling equipment. Len Storvold, Adolph Soyak, Walter Miller, his sons
Carl and Gerald Guthrie. Carl started working on the oil rigs as a young man. While Paul
was a field superintendent for Northern Development in the Lloydminster area, Carl was
still going to school but worked on the rigs during the summers of 1944 to 1946. Carl
later worked with Northern Development for some time. Lloyd McLaren was the office manager
and Carl was the drilling superintendent. Carl and Lloyd later formed Guthrie-McLaren
Drilling.
Len, Adolph and Walter became some of Alberta's and Canada's top
rated men in the oilpatch. Paul commented that they were all learning as they went.
Paul remembers a problem they had in the Leduc field. A number of
contractors moved in, all the Turner Valley contractors, people from the United States.
The other companies were paying $1.00 a day and hiring his employees away from him. They
didn't get the three men he mentioned, they stayed with him and they together made quite a
bit of pretty good history.
He met a man by the name of J. W. Millar. They drilled a test
well for him in Saskatchewan trying to find gas for his salt plant. When the oil boom was
going, he had a chance to buy a used drilling rig that Imperial Oil was laying off. He
needed money, so he went to J. W.Millar and mortgaged the house that he owned in
Lloydminster to get money to start Paul Guthrie Development. Lloyd came to work for Paul
Guthrie Development. Both Paul's sons became drillers for Paul Guthrie Development. They
went through some tough times with Paul Guthrie Development. There were some hungry days.
Husky hired Paul Guthrie Development to drill some of their wells
and he met Glenn Neilson. Paul Guthrie eventually became a director for Mr. Neilson's
company. He commented that he and Bill Williams were great friends and often compared
notes. They used to compete on drilling wells to see who could reach their final point the
quickest.
He remembers Russell Shaw being a prominent man in the oilpatch.
Paul drilled some wells for his company.
Lloyd McLaren's father, Charlie, was a good friend and a big help
to Paul in his earlier days. He was older and gave Paul confidence. They used to discuss
several things.
Husky Oil eventually bought Paul Guthrie Development and he took
back a couple of drilling rigs instead of money. These rigs turned into Guthrie-McLaren
Drilling.
He mentioned that it was hard to leave Lloydminster, as they had
a lot of good friends here.
In 1957 Guthrie - McLaren Drilling started. They did work in
Alberta, Saskatchewan, NWT , Eastern Canada and Texas, pretty well all over. It operated
from 1957 to 1978. Lloyd gives full credit for the development of Guthrie - McLaren to
Paul Guthrie. Paul found when he went into the office everyday, there were a bunch of
decisions to be made, so he had to get out of there and leave them to make their own
decisions, which turned out well. They did very well. They asked advice once in a while
and were willing to listen.
