Manitoba will never be mistaken for Alberta or Saudi Arabia, but that’s not stopping the eastern Prairie province from emerging as a player in the oil and gas game.

That’s right. Not agriculture, aerospace or investment services but bubbling crude. Black gold, Texas tea.

As incredible as it might seem, $1 billion is expected to be spent this year in Manitoba’s oilpatch in the southwestern corner of the province. The Bakkan oilfield is known mostly for production in Saskatchewan, the Dakotas and Montana. But an outlying corner of the gigantic oilfield that juts into the southwest corner of Manitoba is now producing about 30,000 barrels a day.

Still, most Manitobans don’t seem to have the Bakkan oilfield on their radar, with the exception of the tiny communities of Virden and Wascada, the epicentres of all the local drilling activity.

Well, them and a recent U.S. geological survey that says the entire Bakkan oilfield has the potential to produce more than 500 billion barrels of light, sweet crude over its lifespan.

Last year, 516 wells were drilled in Manitoba, at a cost of $1.2 million-$1.5 million each, and almost 600 wells are projected to be drilled in 2011. It’s the busiest period in Manitoba’s oil and gas sector since it was discovered more than a half-century ago.

A combination of oil prices that are once again approaching record highs and new “horizontal” drilling technology is driving the activity. Historically, oil exploration depended on vertical wells alone. But by drilling horizontally — a process in which water, sand or carbon dioxide is injected into a reservoir, pushing the oil to the vertical wells — productivity has increased significantly.

“We’ve got a mini-boom going on,” says Dave Chomiak, Manitoba’s minister of innovation, energy and mines. “If you look at a picture from out there, you’d figure you’re in Alberta because there are miles and miles of oil pumps.”

It’s not all days of wine and roses, though. The influx of workers to Virden and Wascada, communities in which housing is already at a premium, has led to the creation of a work camp in which 150 workers eat and sleep when not on the job. And with hotels booked solid, some local residents are quickly turning their homes into bed and breakfasts while entrepreneurs are taking closed-up buildings and turning them into living quarters reminiscent of youth hostels.

These are the “problems” of a growing industry. Considering that “boom” isn’t the kind of word that’s typically associated — well, ever — with the Manitoba economy, we’ll take them. IE