Oil has started pumping for the first time at a well in Canada’s Quebec province in tests that showed local oil production is viable, its owner Junex said Tuesday.
A total of 2,017 barrels of light, sweet crude oil were produced over 14 days by “the first horizontal oil exploration well ever drilled by industry in Quebec,” the company said in a statement.
At a peak production of 161 barrels per day reached over the last six days of tests at the Gaspe Peninsula well, commercial oil production could be profitable “even at today’s oil price” of below $50 a barrel, it added.
The company acknowledged a current lack of infrastructure — notably ports or rails to move the oil to refineries — available to support a large scale energy sector in the province, but it and others are continuing to search for more deposits in the region, estimated to hold 330 million barrels