The Financial Post reports in its Tuesday edition that as oil prices surged this spring, Alberta producers didn't look to the long-cycle oil sands. A Bloomberg dispatch to the Post says that instead, they rushed to drill the Clearwater formation, a low-cost conventional oil play that lets producers bring on new supply far more quickly. Alberta issued 1,764 drilling licences between the start of the year and June 12, the most for a similar period since 2014. Nearly one in five permits targeted the Clearwater formation. For decades, the country's oil industry has been defined by the oil sands, where multibillion-dollar projects can take years to build. Clearwater is changing that equation. There, Alberta producers have the opportunity to respond to higher prices with new production in months, rather than years. "It doesn't take a whole bunch of capital to get started, and therefore it's quite cost-efficient," said Brian Schmidt, chief executive officer of Tamarack Valley Energy, one of the largest Clearwater producers. "It's phenomenal. There's no conventional play that compares." The Clearwater yields dense, high-sulphur crude, but it can be extracted at a lower cost using conventional multilateral drilling techniques.