Shale Gas at Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets

There is a great deal of talk about shale gas in the region these days, and one might think it a recent discovery. Yet by the turn of the 1900s, perhaps even earlier, exploration was already being carried out at Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets.

We have indeed found a contract, dated 5 July 1907, between the Boston Gas and Oil Co., of Boston, Mass., and Octave Dion, of Saint-Pierre. It gave the oil company permission, for a period of ten years or more, to produce gas or oil, to carry out the necessary exploration, and to handle transport, rights of way, and so on.

The contract specified that lot 105 was the property concerned. That lot was bounded on the north by the river, on the south by Philippe Tousignant (lot 216), on the east by Lothaire Girard (lot 106), and on the west by Alphonce (sic) Dion (lot 104).

Among the conditions set out: an indemnity of fifteen piastres [dollars] a year if drilling did not begin within a certain time; free supply of gas for heating and lighting the house; one twelfth of the price of the oil extracted; fifteen piastres per arpent (an arpent being roughly five sixths of an acre) for damaged crops; all of it, of course, subject to whatever interpretations either party might put forward.

Mr. Dion was to be consulted before the drilling sites were accepted, and no well could be drilled within 200 feet of the house, the barn or the garden without his explicit consent.

We believe several such contracts were signed in the region, because the one we hold is printed on a standard form. On 9 April 1907, the same Boston Gas and Oil Co. signed a contract of the same kind with Alfred Carignan, of Bécancour. (Institut Drouin D29893AN)

Among the present owners of lot 105, now subdivided, we may note Jean-Guy Lesage, Gisèle Paquin, Gérald Beauchemin, and several others.

The exploratory drilling, however, did not give the hoped-for results. We now know that the natural gas trapped in our subsoil is hard to extract in that form and requires fracturing the shale layers to recover it, so the search was abandoned. In fact it took another hundred years or so to develop an effective extraction method; public fears slowed the exploration process, and it will take some time yet before production is safe enough and socially acceptable enough to enrich our community, though there is no doubt that day will come before long. Qui va piano va sano!

History is forever beginning again!

Alain Manset, Société d'histoire et de généalogie Lévrard-Becquet (Lévrard-Becquet Historical and Genealogical Society)