Canol Pipeline

Canol Pipeline, a 10 cm oil PIPELINE built from 1942 to 1944 from Norman Wells, NWT, 1000 km to a refinery at Whitehorse, Yukon. The American armed forces, which urged the project on a reluctant Canadian government, wanted a secure supply of oil products to fuel defence efforts in the Northwest. The refinery was to produce 3000 barrels a day. The pipeline was a fiasco, costing over 5 times its $24-million estimate, and it was plagued by shoddy workmanship. Its deficiencies, exposed by a United States Senate committee chaired by Harry Truman, embarrassed the American military. When the pipeline was abandoned in March 1945 after 13 months' operation, it left a festering scar across the Canadian Northwest - a "junkyard monument to military stupidity."

Author KENNETH S. COATES

Links to Other Sites
Yukon: Larger Than Life
An extensive visitors guide to all there is to see and do in the scenic and historic Yukon. Includes community profiles. From Tourism Yukon.

History of Oil and Gas in the NWT
Historical overview of petroleum exploration in the Northwest Territories. Focuses on oil activity in the Norman Wells region, the Mackenzie Delta, the Beaufort Sea, and the Liard Plateau. Also mentions the Canol agreement signed by US and Canada during World War II. A Government of the Northwest Territories website.

Canol Pipeline
Learn how the Dene people who lived in the Mackenzie River region assisted in the design and construction of the Canol pipeline, an essential section of the overland route used to transport oil from the Canadian north to Alaska during World War II. From the Geological Survey of Canada and the Geological Association of Canada. A PDF file.