Canol Project

The Canol Project was an oil pipeline project constructed during World War II to ensure a supply of oil for the defense of Alaska and the North American west coast. The project included a section of crude petroleum transport by barge, a refinery, and a 4-inch pipeline. It was completed in two years at great cost and was abandoned less than a year later.

History

During World War II the United States was concerned about Japan attacking the west coast and cutting off supply lines to Alaska. They built the Alaska Highway to connect Alaska to the rest of the United States and conceived the CANOL project to ensure a supply of oil from Norman Wells in the Canadian Northwest Territories. The US War Department decided to construct the project in April 1942 and it was assigned to the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
The construction of infrastructure to Alaska via Norman Wells was first raised by the arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who proposed a water connection from the railhead at Waterways, Alberta to Norman Wells, and then a road to Fairbanks via Dawson City as an alternative to the Alaska Highway.
Oil in the Norman Wells area was noted as far back at 1789 when the explorer Alexander Mackenzie noted seepage of oil along the river that would later bear his name. Claims for oil were staked by the geologist T.O. Bosworth, and they were subsequently acquired by Imperial Oil, which drilled three producing wells and built a small refinery by 1924. Local demand was so small that refinery soon closed, but it re-opened in the early 1930s to supply the Eldorado Mine at Port Radium.
The order to construct a pipeline from Norman Wells to Whitehorse was issued by Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell, head of the Construction Division of the Quartermaster Corps, based on the recommendation of Colonel James Graham, the Dean of Engineering at the University of Kentucky. Graham based his recommendation on a one-day conference he organized, attended mostly by Army officials, where no one present was familiar with the area the pipeline was to be built. Somervill's directive set the completion date for the project as 1 October 1942, a mere six months after the order was issued, although Somervill later told a U.S. Senate Committee reviewing the project that at the time he thought the project might actually be completed by the summer of 1943.

Construction

, H. Price & Co. and W. E. Callahan Construction Co. formed a consortium to construct the project. Known as Bechtel-Price-Callahan it also included six associated companies. Standard Oil Company was a consultant on the project and would operate the refinery in Whitehorse. Imperial Oil owned the Norman Wells field and would be responsible for the supply of oil. J. Gordon Turnbull and Sverdrup and Parcel were chosen to the project's architect and engineer of record.
The eventual scope of the project included:

An barge supply route from Waterways, Alberta to Norman Wells
A series of ten airfields stretching from Edmonton to Norman Wells
An winter road from Peace River, Alberta to Norman Wells
A water and rail-based supply route via Prince Rupert and Skagway, Alaska
An all-weather road between Norman Wells and Johnson's Crossing, Yukon
A refinery in Whitehorse, Yukon
A total of of pipelines connecting Whitehorse to:
* Norman Wells
* Skagway
* Watson Lake, and
* Fairbanks
A telegraph system connecting all key points of the project
Survey

In 1942, Europeans had limited knowledge of the area between Norman Wells and Whitehorse, as the Mountain Dene or Shutagot'ine would come down from the mountains to trade with European traders along the Mackenzie River. BPC hired a land surveyor named Guy Blanchet to identify a route. Interviews with Dene from Fort Norman identified a trail through the Mackenzie Mountains that was the most suitable, and in October 1942 Blanchet, four guides from Fort Norman and two others set out by dog sled to survey the route that would eventually become the crossing of the pipeline over the Mackenzie Mountains. Subsequent surveys along this route by teams using heavy equipment were abandoned as the extreme cold caused machinery to fail. While there were several aerial photo projects, they were inconsistent and it is not clear how much they were used to guide location. Typically, much of the route decisions were made during construction, resulting in numerous "false starts" and reroutes of the road.

Logistics

Much of the pipeline and equipment for the eastern section of Canol No.1 was moved by rail to Waterways, Alberta, where it was transferred to barges to take it up the Athabasca River. The Army was initially unaware that the unnavigable Slave Rapids made navigation to Great Slave Lake impossible, and barges had to be portaged by truck from Fort Fitzgerald to Fort Smith. Once the Mackenzie River froze over, the army constructed an ice road to Norman Wells.
The work of loading barges cutting wood to supply the boilers of paddle boats was assigned to the 388th Engineer Battalion, a segregated unit of 1,000 black men with white officers from Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. The men of the 388th were given the most demanding work, and were the lowest priority for rations, equipment, and accommodations, with some of them spending the harsh sub-arctic winter in tents.
The western portion of the Canol was comparatively easy to supply, as supplies could be shipped to the port Skagway and then transported to Whitehorse on the White Pass Railroad.

Building the pipeline

The pipeline itself was built by the civilian BPC consortium, which hired 52,900 people, mostly men who were ineligible for military service. While the contractors were permitted to hire Canadian workers, the Canadian government did not want the Canada's wartime industries to lose workers to what was seen as a U.S. project, and Canadians made up less than 20% of the workers on the project. While BPC emphasized the challenging conditions in its hiring, with posters warning prospective workers that they "will be required to work and live under the most extreme conditions imaginable," the project experience high rates of turnover, with 28,000 workers not finishing their 9-month contracts.
The pipeline was just in diameter. The low gravity crude oil from Norman Wells had a pour point well below the freezing mark and could be run through a narrow pipeline without being heated. The pipeline was laid on the surface of the ground to simplify construction and maintenance. Ten pump stations were needed to move the crude oil to Whitehorse. The pumps were specially designed to be able to use the Norman Wells crude as fuel. An additional 19 pump stations moved the refined fuel along the Alaska Highway from Whitehorse as far as Watson Lake and Fairbanks.
The Whitehorse refinery was purchased used and shipped up from Corpus Christi, Texas. It was operated by Standard Oil and located in the Maxwell Industrial Area north of present-day Downtown Whitehorse.
The final construction cost for the Canol Project construction has been estimated at US$133 million and may have been closer to $300 million when military personnel are included.

Operation

The last pipeline weld was completed on February 16, 1944, near Macmillan Pass. Oil first entered the pipeline at Norman Wells on 19 December 1943, but due to construction issues oil did not reach the Whitehorse refinery until 1 April 1945. The grand opening was held on April 30. Initially only able to produce gasoline, it was finally able to produce aviation gas in November 1944.
Over the life of the Canol No.1 pipeline were pumped into the line at Norman Wells. Only 83.7% of that arrived in Whitehorse. Most of the remaining is believed to have been lost due to pipeline breaks. The pipeline had been fully operational for 331 days when it was shut down on 13 March 1945.

Camps and pump stations

The Canol System had a network of manned pump stations, maintenance camps,

Name	Location	Notes	Status
Pump Station No. 1 "Camp Canol"	Mile 8	Base camp on the Mackenzie River, included airstrip	Demolished by Imperial Oil in 1977
Pump Station No. 2 "Dodo Canyon"	Mile 36.5		Site remediated 2019, pumphouse and garage left standing but boarded up.
Little Keele River	Mile 50	Highway Maintenance Camp	Remediated 2019, no buildings remaining.
Little Keele River/Blue Mountain	Mile 67.5	Highway Maintenance Camp	Remediated 2019, no buildings remaining.
Pump Station No. 3 "Plains of Abraham"	Mile 76	Highway Maintenance Camp	Remediated 2019, some buildings and storage tanks remain but sealed.
Plains of Abraham	Mile 80	Highway Maintenance Camp	Remediated 2019, no buildings remaining, but large amounts of historical equipment remain on site.
Bolstead Creek	Mile 100	Highway Maintenance Camp	Remediated 2019, no buildings remaining.
Pump Station No. 4 "Bolstead Creek"	Mile 108		Remediated 2019, pumphouse and garage left standing but boarded up.
Twitya River	Mile 131	Highway Maintenance Camp	Remediated 2019, no buildings remaining, but large amounts of historical equipment remain on site.
Pump Station No. 5 "Ekwi River"	Mile 170		Remediated 2019, no buildings remaining, but large amounts of historical equipment remain on site.
Pump Station No. 6 "lntga River"	Mile 208		Remediated 2019, one building left standing but boarded up.
Tsichy River	Mile 222	Highway Maintenance Camp Last camp in the Northwest Territories.	Airstrip and NWT Government environmental station. Remediated 2019.
Macmillan River	Mile 238.5	Highway Maintenance Camp	Cleaned up 1975/76, except for three buildings left standing.
Macmillan River	Mile 246	Highway Maintenance Camp	Cleaned up 1975/76.
Macmillan River	Mile 279	Highway Maintenance Camp	Cleaned up 1975/76.
Pump Station No. 7 "Macmillan River"	Mile 280		Cleaned up 1975/76, except for one building left standing.
Sheldon Lake	Mile 299	Highway Maintenance Camp	Cleaned up 1975/76.
Ross River	Mile 372.4	Highway Maintenance Camp
Pump Station No. 8 "Orchie Lake"	Mile 337		Cleaned up 1975/76, except for one building left standing.
Pump Station No. 9 "Lapie River"	Mile 387		No structures remaining during 1975/76 cleanup operations, garbage removed.
Murphy Creek	Mile 491	Highway Maintenance Camp
Pump Station No. 10 "Gravel Creek"	Mile 437		Cleaned up 1975/76, except for one building left standing.
Camp Canol "Johnson's Crossing"	Mile 513	Highway Maintenance Camp

Name	Location	Notes	Status
Carcross	MP66 Klondike Highway	also part of Canol No. 3	Dismantled in 1974.
Summit	Summit of White Pass

Name	Location	Notes	Status
Carcross	MP66 Klondike Highway	also part of Canol No. 2	Dismantled in 1974.
Station W	MP855 Alaska Highway
Station X	MP794 Alaska Highway		Site destroyed in a forest fire in 1956 In 1996 site inspection the site was used as a firing range by a gun club.
Station Y	MP748 Alaska Highway
Station Z	MP693 Alaska Highway

Name	Location	Notes	Status
Station A	Whitehorse
Station B	MP957 Alaska Highway		No buildings left in 1996 inspection.
Station C	MP1000 Alaska Highway
Station D	MP1036 Alaska Highway
Station E	MP1081 Alaska Highway		Site repurposed for Haines-Fairbanks Pipeline pumping station.
Station F	MP1126 Alaska Highway		Temporarily repurposed as a highway maintenance camp in the 1950s, only pump building remained in 1996 inspection.
Station G	MP1166 Alaska Highway		Only building foundations remained in 1996 inspection.
Station H	MP1206 Alaska Highway	Last station in Canada
Station I
Station J
Station K	Tanacross
Station L	Dot Lake
Station M	Delta Junction
Station N	Big Delta
Station O	Salcha