One Well, Twelve Legs: Inside Canada’s Fastest-Growing Oil Play
Oil production from multilateral wells in Alberta has grown from 30,000 to 230,000 barrels a day since 2017, making the Clearwater play near Slave Lake Canada’s fastest-growing oil play. Here’s how it works, who’s behind it, and who owns the pipelines.
Ask someone in Calgary where Alberta’s oil comes from and the answer is usually Fort McMurray. Somebody who works downtown might add the Montney. Not many people outside the oilpatch would mention the bush country around Slave Lake. Yet that’s where one of the fastest-growing oil plays on the continent has been running for most of a decade.
The Alberta Energy Regulator’s annual outlook, released this week, puts a number on it. Between 2017 and 2025, oil production from multilateral wells in Alberta went from about 30,000 barrels a day to 230,000. McDaniel & Associates, the consultants who recounted the province’s reserves for the regulator, concluded it’s Canada’s fastest-growing oil resource play. That’s roughly a quarter of what the Trans Mountain pipeline can carry, coming out of a corner of the province most Albertans have never driven through.
The Clearwater Oil Play Near Slave Lake
The play takes its name from the Clearwater Formation, a layer of sandstone and shale deep under north-central Alberta. It isn’t Clearwater County, which is a long way south around Rocky Mountain House. The Clearwater play sits in the boreal forest north of Edmonton. It came out of obscurity in 2017, after a run of high-priced land sales in the Marten Hills and Nipisi areas. Drilling has since spread to Jarvie, Pelican and Seal, and to Peavine near Peace River.
The oil is dense and high in sulphur, a lot like what comes out of the oil sands. The difference is how it reaches the surface. There’s no mine and no steam plant. The oil flows cold, without heating or fracking.
How Multilateral Wells Produce Clearwater Heavy Oil
Operators drill a single hole from surface that branches underground into several horizontal legs, often between 7 and 12, each averaging about 1.7 kilometres long. Multilateral drilling isn’t new; it’s been in the toolkit for decades. What happened here is that an established method met a reservoir it suits well, at a time when producers wanted barrels that came quickly and didn’t take billions up front.
That speed is most of the appeal. An oil sands expansion takes years, while a Clearwater well can be producing within months. When oil prices climbed this spring, Bloomberg reported that producers sped up drilling here rather than in the oil sands. Tamarack’s chief executive, Brian Schmidt, put it plainly: getting started doesn’t take much capital.
Up near Peace River, Baytex has been drilling 13 multilateral wells from one pad at Peavine. Of the seven Clearwater wells it brought on there in the second quarter, six averaged 478 barrels a day over their first month.
Tamarack, Headwater and the $10 Billion Clearwater Merger
The money has followed. Tamarack Valley and Headwater Exploration announced their $10 billion all-stock merger on September 8th, creating the largest Clearwater producer. Spur Petroleum and Tamarack, both small players not long ago, now rank among Alberta’s top ten oil producers, rivalling some oil sands companies. Canadian Natural is in the play too, but the smaller independents built it.
For a young rig hand from Slave Lake, a play like this can mean working near home instead of flying in and out of camp. Schmidt told the Lakeside Leader that Indigenous employees make up nearly a third of Tamarack’s field workforce, and many of the other workers come from Slave Lake and nearby communities. The company runs six rigs in the region on a budget of $400 million to $450 million a year, much of it spent in the field. That shows up in fuel sales, motel bookings and trucking contracts.
He also expects it to last. Schmidt figures the Clearwater should keep producing for another 50 years, because waterflooding can recover a lot more of the oil after primary drilling. Waterflooding pushes water into the reservoir to sweep more oil toward the wells. Baytex has waterflood pilots running at Peavine, and Obsidian expects about 35% of its Clearwater production to have waterflood support by the end of this year.
Indigenous Ownership in the Clearwater Play
The play sits within the traditional territories of First Nations and Métis communities around Lesser Slave Lake. In December 2023, 12 of those communities formed a partnership called Wapiscanis Waseskwan Nipiy, which is Cree for “Marten Clearwater.” They bought an 85% stake in Tamarack’s Clearwater pipelines, oil batteries and gas plants for $150 million, backed by a loan guarantee from the Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation. Bigstone Cree Nation later joined as the 13th member.
The partners include Driftpile Cree Nation, Sawridge First Nation, Loon River First Nation, and the Peavine and Gift Lake Métis Settlements, among others. Peerless Trout First Nation’s chief described the deal as an economic source of revenue that would have a big impact on his community.
Not everything about the play is settled. The core of the play overlaps the Slave Lake and Nipisi caribou ranges. Tamarack says it limits the surface footprint by putting many wells on a single pad. The Lakeside Leader’s August coverage raised the bigger local question: whether the region can hold on to lasting benefits while it manages the pressures that come with another resource boom.
From the air, the Peavine pad is one small clearing in the spruce. The legs underneath it run for kilometres.
Sources
Alberta Energy Regulator, “Alberta Energy Outlook (ST98),” September 2026
https://www.aer.ca/data-and-performance-reports/statistical-reports/alberta-energy-outlook-st98
Alberta Energy Regulator, “Petroleum Reserves,” ST98 2026
https://www.aer.ca/data-and-performance-reports/statistical-reports/alberta-energy-outlook-st98/reserves
Alberta Energy Regulator, ST98 2026 Highlights Infographic
https://static.aer.ca/prd/documents/sts/ST98/2026/st98-2026-highlights-infographic.pdf
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Lakeside Leader, “The Clearwater boom: Alberta’s next oil hotspot is in Slave Lake’s backyard,” William Hetherington, August 4, 2026
https://www.lakesideleader.com/the-clearwater-boom-albertas-next-oil-hotspot-is-in-slave-lakes-backyard/
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https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001279495/000127949526000040/a995-q22026pressrelease.htm
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https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1279495/000106299326000538/exhibit99-1.htm
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https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1334388/000119312526019101/obe-ex99_1.htm
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https://wapiscanis.com/indigenous-communities-partner-with-tamarack-valley-ltd-energy-to-announce-clearwater-infrastructure-partnership/
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https://www.southpeacenews.com/first-nations-metis-settlements-invest-in-clearwater-oilfield/
