You may not recognize their faces, but they helped build the petroleum industry in Alberta and across Canada.

The eight newest members of the Canadian Petroleum Hall of Fame were inducted at the sixth annual inductee dinner and ceremony Sept. 27 in Edmonton. They joined 66 previous inductees who, in some cases, devoted their entire lives to Canada’s petroleum industry.

The 2002 inductees are:

* Eugene Coste (1859-1940), who drilled Canada’s first commercial gas well in Ontario’s Essex County in 1888, founded the Bow Island field in southern Alberta in 1909, built a pipeline to Calgary and founded Canadian Western Natural Gas (now ATCO Gas).

* Jerry D’Arcy (1921-2001), who owned and ran Can-Tex Drilling and Exploration in Calgary from 1961 to 1999.

* Jack Donald, 67, started with two gas stations and a truck in Red Deer 25 years ago, and subsequently built Parkland Industries into a chain that spans western and northern Canada with nearly 450 retail locations, a refinery and a trucking fleet.

* Hugh Leiper, 75, spent more than 50 years on and around drilling rigs. He joined Great Plains as a drilling superintendent, and moved on to Pacific Petroleum in 1957, where he served as superintendent in Fort St. John and production manager in Edmonton before eventually moving to Calgary as production and drilling manager for all operations. When the industry formed the Canadian Drilling Research Association, Leiper served as its first and only chairman.

* Brian MacNeill spent 30 years in the petroleum industry, including stints as chair of Petro-Canada, and he retired as president of Enbridge Inc. last year.

* Mike Miller, 58, began his career in the petroleum industry as an oilfield firefighter 45 years ago by washing the fire truck and cleaning up the shop at his father’s Drayton Valley business, Safety Boss. In 1991, during a 200-day effort, Safety Boss brought 180 blazing wells under control following the Gulf War. He now operates the firm from its headquarters in Calgary.

* Fred Pheasey, 60, built one of the world’s three largest suppliers of drilling and well-servicing equipment, Dreco Energy Services, after starting his business from scratch in a tin shack in Edmonton.

* Tony Vanden Brink, 73, came to Alberta in 1950 after service with the Royal Dutch Marine Corps. In 1968 he became president of the Calgary-based firm Kenting Drilling, then became president until 1988 of a much larger company that took over Kenting Drilling in 1997, Trimac Ltd.