Eugene Coste died at Toronto, Ontario, in January, 1940, at the age of 81.
A Canadian by birth, he received his technical education in France, and obtained the diploma of B.Sc. from the Académie de Paris in 1876, and the diploma of mining engineer from the École National Supérieure des Mines de Paris in 1883.
On his return to his native country, he became a member and later mining engineer of the Geological Survey of Canada, and in 1888 located and directed the drilling of the first commercial gas well in Canada, in Essex County, Alberta. In the following year he resigned his position on the Geological Survey to engage in private practice as a petroleum engineer and geologist. His first enterprise in that capacity was the location of the discovery well of the Welland County Field which for eighteen years supplied oil to Buffalo, N.Y., and later to Niagara Falls, Welland, Fort Erie, etc.
In 1906 he formed the Volcanic Oil and Gas Co., which drilled in Kent County and supplied Chatham and Windsor, Ont., and later, in conjunction with the Union Gas Company, supplied oil to many of the large towns in the province. In 1909, while acting as consulting engineer and geologist for the Canadian Pacific Railway, he discovered the Bow Island Gas Field in southern Alberta, and after purchasing the property from the C.P.R., formed a company which constructed one of the longest natural gas pipe lines then in existence, to supply Lethbridge, Calgary, and intermediate towns. Four years later, Mr. Coste formed a syndicate to drill in the Viking district of Alberta, which eventually supplied Edmonton and other towns, and in 1916, the Union Gas Company, acting on his advice, located and put into operation the Dover Field, Ontario. From 1911 onwards he had the assistance of his son, E.F. Coste, whom he admitted to partnership after the Great War.
Mr. Coste wrote a number of papers on his special subject from time to time. One, ‘Fallacies in the Theory of the Organic Origin of Petroleum’, appeared in Vol. xxi of the Transactions, and others were discussed before the Canadian Mining Institute and societies in the United States. For two years in succession, 1903 and 1904, he was President of the Canadian Mining Institute.
Mr. Coste was elected a Member of the Institution in 1909.
Vol. 50, Trans I.M.M. 1940-41, p. 543
