A Natural Gas Co-operative

In the 1960's, the idea of the gas co-op was born to supply gas to rural Alberta.

 

Rural Albertans, with the aid and support of the Alberta Government, formed franchise areas for companies to be operated as a co-operative form of business organization.  The business plan was a simple one: the business was to be owned by its members and operated as a "not for profit" organization.

 

Founded in 1973, Dinosaur Gas Co-op Ltd. began to provide natural gas to the rural areas outside of Brooks, Alberta.  The Co-op was formed by area farmers who wanted to utilize natural gas, but found there were no providers willing to take this on.  In the beginning, irrigation was considered to be the heart of the system, and the Co-op fought hard to convince the government to grant enough money to build a system big enough to accommodate irrigation.

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In 1990 Dinosaur Gas purchased the Tilley Gas Company, and began to service the Village of Tilley and the nearby rural area.  The Tilley Gas Company originated in 1939, when Tilley hotelier Fred Hankel had a gas well drilled.  While he had originally only intended to serve his home and hotel, he soon found himself overwhelmed with requests for gas from nearly everyone in Tilley, and the Tilley Gas Company was born.  He purchased used steel boiler tubing, as steel pipe was scarce due to the Second World War, and with the help of a local welder, connected 150 homes to his well.  Following the purchase,  Dinosaur connected Tilley to the then NOVA gas system, as an alternate means of supply.  Between 2011-14 Dinosaur replaced all of the steel line in the Village of Tilley with polyethelene pipe.

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Dinosaur also supplies the Hamlet of Patricia,  Kinbrook Island, Lake Newell Resort and rural areas in a horse shoe shape around Brooks.  Dinosaur currently supplies natural gas to approximately 950 members, residential, farm, irrigation and industrial.  

 

Dinosaur Gas is a member of the Federation of Alberta Gas Co-ops. Together with other member utilities, the Federation forms the largest rural gas system in the world.  All of our Board of Directors and most of our Staff are not only proud to serve the members of the Co-op but are also customers themselves. Our current membership is served by 8 Board Directors and 4 full-time employees.  We build, operate, and maintain our own distribution system and are on-call 24 hours per day to respond to gas odor, carbon monoxide and natural gas emergencies.

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The Co-ops have come together to purchase gas from suppliers through Gas Alberta Inc, who provides Co-ops tremendous buying power with all of the Co-ops combined, supplying and hedging on approximately 25,000,000 gigajoules of gas annually.  All of the gas distributed by Dinosaur Gas Co-op Ltd. is supplied by TC Energy (Formerly NOVA).