Petroleum and Natural Gas Prospects of Mississippian and Jurassic of Western Canada

Abstract With rare exception, the delegates at ihis convention are scientifically minded geologists who come here for the express purpose of studying the geological section in the vicinity of Jasper, of participating in a symposium on the Mississippian and Jurassic of Western Canada, and of getting away for a few days from direct economic aspects of the oil business. Under the circumstances, it is hoped that I will be forgiven for reminding you of economic considerations. In return for for-giveness, I agree to present a minimum of facts, all of them calculated to support a single idea, that of the great importance that Mississippian and Jurassic formations promise to play in the future oil development of Western Canada. In choosing the Jurassic and Mississippian as a symposium subject for the 1955 Jasper regional meeting and field conference, the symposium committee of the Alberta Society of Petroleum (leologisls had in mind the excellent outcrop sections of those rock groups in the Jasper area and the background they provide for a study of the Mississippian and Jurassic elsewhere in Western Canada. These two rock groups, particularly the Mississippian, are daily increasing in importance as petroleum and natural gas reservoirs, in view of which the committee must be congratulated for its choice of a subject. Furthermore, the delegates who attend this conference would do well to make the most of the excellent field studies as forecast by the Guidebook and the symposium papers as forecast by the published abstracts. This can best be accomplished