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In the early 1900's, several
gas and oil wells were explored close to what is now the Swiftcurrent
area, in the western part of Glacier County, and on the Blackfeet Reservation.
Drilling west and east of Cut Bank helped cause a population expansion
in Cut Bank, but the most significant economic impact came from the fields
discovered to the north of town.
The first well to hit gas was drilled in September 1926 by the Sandpoint Oil Company at Berger Well #1, located 22 miles north of Cut Bank and drilled at a depth of 2459 feet. At the time, there was no method to take care of oil in any quantity (should it be there), and completion of the well was difficult, so it was plugged and abandoned. Three years later another well, drilled by Drumheller-Yunck 8 1/2 miles SE, was successful and had an initial production of 7 million cubic feet of gas and 5 barrels/day of oil at a depth of 2740 feet. This lead to the drilling of a third well, also by Drumheller-Yunck, completed in 1931, with an initial production of 35 barrels/day of oil. This was considered the first commercial oil well in the vicinity of Cut Bank.
Over
the next ten years, exploration and drilling hit a feverish pace. By July
1940, 506 oil wells, 78 gas wells, and 86 dry holes were drilled with
a total daily production of 10,922 barrels/ day in oil, and 21.2 million
cubic feet of gas. What is now considered the Cut Bank Field lies on the
west flank of the Kevin-Sunburst dome and is one of several pools on a
major uplift known as the Sweetgrass Arch. The field is approximately
31 miles long and 10 miles wide.
In February 1931, Northwest Gas & Transmission Company was formed to build a gas line from the Cut Bank Field to Butte and Anaconda, MT. The company would produce and transport the gas and Montana Power would distribute it. When the line was started in June of 1931, it brought an large influx of workers and their families to Cut Bank.
In October of 1932, an absorption plant to extract butane and propane from the lines was built to the east of Cut Bank. In 1939, a refinery was added to co-exist with the absorption plant. In 1936, a refinery was built to the west of Cut Bank, but was sold and moved to Wisconsin in 1942. The population of Cut Bank once again was on the increase with the workers and their families brought here for the construction of these two plants. The plants were made possible due to the costly economics of shipping the crude to other locations for refining. (The refinery to the east was shut down in the late 1980's and is now a compressor station for Montana Power Company.)
The
first gas and oil workers to come to the Cut Bank area were largely from
the southern United States where oil had already been discovered. They
were not quite prepared for the winter working conditions and many left
for the winter and came back in the spring and summer. Over time, the
descendents of these workers were now the ones in demand when the oil
fields of Alaska, and other northern climates, were discovered.
While the early 1930's brought a general slowdown to oil and gas exploration due to the overall national depression, the late1930's brought a tremendous increase due to the onset of World War II and the demands for gas and oil that came with it.
In the early to mid 1940's a new gas and oil well area was secured by Union Oil and Montana Power in what is called the Reagan structure. In the 1950's other gas and oil pools were discovered by independents, or "wildcatters", and some were subsequently purchased or managed by large oil companies such as Union Oil, Texaco, Conoco, Phillips Petroleum, Humble Oil, Cardinal Petroleum, and Montana Power.
In the 1960's, new gas and oil production recovery methods brought a second boom to the area. Pipelines were built, with Cut Bank as the hub, from the Kevin-Sunburst and Sweetgrass Hills area. The industry continued to grow through the 1970's . The highest production year for oil was 1971 with 5,541,061 barrels pumped. The 1980's and 90's have seen a general decline in the industry due to foreign competition, increased cost to explore and extract, and supply/demand pressure. The wells in production today are mostly stripper wells and employment is mainly with the service companies that maintain them.
Throughout the whole of the exploration and production era, Cut Bank's gas and oil fields remain one of the largest overall production areas in Montana and have contributed greatly to the economics of the state, county and city.
Sources:
- Cut Bank Oil & Gas Fields, Glacier Co. MT by John Blixt 1941
- History of Glacier County, MT, Published by Glacier County Historical Society 1984
- Cut Bank: Its Environs and the Great Northern by Great Northern Railway Historical Society Reference Sheet #232 September 1995