Corridor now drilling McCully Field for oil

A small Halifax-based oil and gas company is getting ready to ship the first of what it hopes will be billions ofcubic feetof natural gas from New Brunswick's Kings County, punctuating an energy boom that's breathed new life into the area and lured expatriates back from the West.

Halifax's Corridor Resources is behind a potentially booming energy development in the small community of Penobsquis, where gas is found in an area known as McCully Field.

A huge and expensive drill rig and its crew have beenbrought infrom Alberta, and it works 24 hours a day in a hunt for New Brunswick gas.

"We believe we have over a trillion cubic feet in the Hiram Brook reservoir here, so there's a lot of drilling here ahead to fully exploit it," said Norm Miller, president of Corridor Resources.

The company believes there is nearly $10 billion worth of gas in the ground in the area, and has already found enough to warrant spending over $50 million to start building a gas processing plant and an associated 50 kilometre-long pipeline to connect the field to market.

Corridor's stock price has quadrupled over the last four years as the McCully Field continues to show promise. It quadrupled again over the last four months as the company got close to moving that gas to market, and it's not just Corridor that's been doing well.

Spinoff benefits

The Timberland Motel has been family-owned in Penobsquis for 32 years, but it looked set to close a decade ago, when the Fredericton-Moncton Highway opened anddirected traffic away from the business.

But the Timberland sits at the edge of the McCully gas field, and all the new workers have pumped life into the business.

"We have something to look forward to, not the doom and gloom that we saw 10 years ago when we didn't know if we'd be open or not," said Cathy MacIntyre with the Timberland. "We just need the people to keep the business going and we can see now that's probably going to happen."

The natural gas deposit has teased prospectors and nearby communities for a decade, but it's a dream turning to reality and attracting millions of dollars and hundreds of people to the area.

'Exciting to get home'

That includes many Maritimers who heard about the development out west and have been drawn back home, like Cape Breton native Ken McClellan, who applied to Corridor from Alberta.

"I've got two younger brothers still in high school, so I get to see them play hockey, and my sister just had a baby," McClellan said. "So, it's exciting to get home."

But others who have come are excited for different reasons. New gas finds are becoming rare, and the McCully Field's potential is still largely unknown.

Doug Baily also came to Corridor from Alberta. Baily's wife is from Moncton and wanted to come home, but Baily said he was intrigued by the problems McCully presents.

"From just a technical oil and gas experience, this is probably one of the few opportunities other than [in] the high Arctic or the offshore where you can get into a 'greenfields' installation, a place where nobody's been before," Baily said. "If you're ever out in Alberta, you'll find that there's gas wells in everyone's backyard almost. It's been done many many many times, and the infrastructure's all there. This was an opportunity to start from ground zero and build a new business."

By the end of the year, Corridor expects to have 20 wells hooked up and pumping gas out of McCully. The question is whether the project will grow any bigger than that, and whether these new holes being drilled will come up full of gas or empty.

Miller hopes this is just the beginning of the boom.

"We're still in the early stages of exploring this region and we don't know how much more gas we'll find and develop, but it looks promising," he said.