Shale Gas
A contract dated 5 July 1907 between the Boston Gas and Oil Co and Octave Dion granted gas and oil rights over lot 105 at Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets: exploration here was nothing new.
Written in French by Alain Manset, May 25, 2015. Quotations from period documents are left in the original. Lire l’original en français.
Shale gas!
There is a great deal of talk about shale gas in the region these days; one might think it is a recent discovery, and yet, as early as the turn of the 1900s, and perhaps even before that, exploration was already going on at Saint-Pierre-les-Becquets.
We have in fact 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 to exploit, for a period of ten years or even longer, the production of gas or oil (petroleum), along with the necessary exploration, the transport, the rights of way, and so on.
The contract stipulated that lot 105 was the one 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; the free supply of gas for heating and lighting the house; one twelfth of the price of the petroleum extracted; fifteen piastres per arpent [an arpent is roughly 0.85 acre] for damaged crops; all of it, of course, subject to whatever interpretations one or the other of the parties might put forward.
Mr. Dion had to be consulted before the drilling sites could be accepted; no well could be drilled within 200 pieds [feet] of the house, the barn or the garden without explicit consent.
We think that several contracts were signed in the region, because the one we have is printed on a pre-printed 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-day owners of lot 105, now subdivided, we may note Jean-Guy Lesage, Gisèle Paquin, Gérald Beauchemin, and several others.
History is an eternal beginning again!
Alain Manset, Société d’histoire et de généalogie Lévrard-Becquet (Lévrard-Becquet Historical and Genealogical Society)
Where this article sits
About the Society
A group of volunteers researching, preserving and publishing the history and genealogy of the Lévrard-Becquet seigneury since 2002.
shglb.com/en/gaz-de-schiste/