Canol Pipeline

Canol Pipeline, a 10 cm oil pipeline built from 1942 to 1944 from Norman Wells, NWT, 1000 km to a refinery at Whitehorse, Yukon. The American armed forces, which urged the project on a reluctant Canadian government, wanted a secure supply of oil products to fuel defence efforts in the Northwest. The refinery was to produce 3000 barrels a day. The pipeline was a fiasco, costing over 5 times its $24-million estimate, and it was plagued by shoddy workmanship. Its deficiencies, exposed by a United States Senate committee chaired by Harry Truman, embarrassed the American military. When the pipeline was abandoned in March 1945 after 13 months' operation, it left a festering scar across the Canadian Northwest - a "junkyard monument to military stupidity."