Karl Adolf Clark

Karl Adolf Clark (1888-1966) is the person history has most prominently associated with the early development of Alberta’s oil sands. He was not alone in the field, but his sustained, systematic and ultimately successful efforts to understand and master the oil sands justify his prominence. Clark saw his life’s work come together at Bitumount in the late 1940s, when an oil sands separation plant was purpose-built there according to principles he had researched, and following designs he had developed.

In 1920, Henry Marshall Tory, president of the University of Alberta, invited Clark to come to Edmonton to study the vast oil sands deposits in the province’s north. Clark was appointed the first head of the

Roads Division at the newly-created (1921) Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta. Clark’s first report on bitumen summarized the known extent of the deposits, and dealt mainly with its possibilities as a paving material. He also mentioned its potential use in the glass industry and included a brief mention of the vastnes of its oil content. In the following annual report, Clark optimistically stated that “Good progress has been made with the separation problem, and there is reason to hope that a simple commercial process may soon be perfected.” Little did he know, that this “simple” task would occupy more than forty years of his life.

As an employee of the Scientific and Industrial Research Council of Alberta, and its successor, the Research Council of Alberta, Clark was never responsible for the Bitumount site. However, his published research was readily available, and certainly had an impact on Bitumount’s early days. Later, his influence was more direct when, in the 1940s, the Alberta government became involved in the development of a model separation plant with Oil Sands Limited. The new Bitumount plant, erected during 1945-1949, was based on the extensive and in-depth research that Clark conducted over many years, and he was a constant presence in an advisory capacity. In 1947, a laboratory was installed on site by Clark and David Pasternack, for the purpose of analyzing and monitoring the separation process. Over the next few years, Clark was on hand whenever a delegation toured the plant. This included members of the

provincial legislature in 1949, Sidney Blair that same year, and the international Athabasca Oil Sands Conference tour in 1951.

When the Bitumount plant demonstrated the economic viability of deriving petroleum products from the oil sands, Karl Clark was the person most widely credited with this success. Even after the plant was shut down and finally abandoned in 1957, Clark maintained his interest in the oil sands. On the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday in 1963, the Second Athabasca Oil Sands Conference was held in Edmonton. This gathering resulted in the publication of a book of essays on the subject, which was dedicated to Karl Clark “as a token of gratitude for the forty-three years he has devoted to the search for a method of producing large quantities of oil, at a competitive price, from the Athabasca oil sands.”