New Gold in the Yukon

In the vast northern "Tomorrow Country" (TIME, Aug. 3), the 1,500,000-sq.-mi. Yukon and Northwest Territories, a happy discovery served notice on Canada that tomorrow is coming sooner than it thinks. On black-fly-infested tundra 175 miles above Dawson City, Chance No. 1, the first gas-oil well in Canada near the Arctic Circle, blew in with a roar. The discovery was made by Western Minerals Co., which belongs to Calgary Lawyer-Oilman Eric Harvie. Gushed the Toronto Globe and Mail: "A landmark in northern history." Sixty-one years after it struck gold, the Yukon had struck black gold.

The Chance No. 1 strike is no accident, but the almost inevitable climax to one of the greatest oil rushes in history. Besides Western Minerals, companies like California Standard, Amerada, Shell, Texaco and Midland have grabbed up 130 million acres in the area to stake millions on electronically corroborated hunches that underneath the permafrost lies one of the world's greatest oil pools. The rush has even pushed into the remote Arctic Archipelago, where at least ten companies have asked for exploration permits. Companies with household names such as Richfield are planning to explore places with exotic names such as Graham Island. And the northern halves of British Columbia and Alberta, though far south of last week's discovery site, have in the last year produced big gas wells that make the whole region one of the world's liveliest sites for oil and gas exploration.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.