Unlocking the Potential:
Research and Operations through 1950

When the federal government first turned its focus on the Athabasca Oil Sands during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, almost nothing was known about the distant resource. Even after several decades of study, much remained to be discovered—the vast scale of the Athabasca Oil Sands deposit was now clear, but the nature of the resource was not yet well understood. What were its physical characteristics? What were its component parts? Could it be processed into useful products? Only when systematic research methods began to be applied to these questions was significant progress made towards unlocking the potential of the oil sands.

Agencies of both the federal and provincial governments became involved in the search for solutions to the oil sands puzzle. Clearly, if a profitable use could be found for such an extensive natural resource, it could be an important source of public income. Some private interests also took up the challenge, though these were individuals or start-up companies, rather than the established petroleum industry.

In the early 1920s, research emphasis was on the potential of the oil sands as a road surfacing material, which promised only a marginal return on investment. However, with petroleum processing technologies developing and detailed studies about the oil sands accumulating, it soon became clear that products with greater value could be derived from the resource.

In 1929, Karl Clark noted that

rapid and revolutionary developments in oil refining technology have been taking place in recent years. The result has been that the status of such oils as the bitumen content of the bituminous sands for gasoline manufacture has been completely changed. While refining depended on straight distillation, oils of this sort were worthless for this purpose. But with the new methods of cracking, these same oils can be broken up by heat and pressure into surprisingly large yields of motor fuel…There is no great technical difficulty about using any oil or bitumen for gasoline manufacture. Whether it is practical to use them is almost entirely a question of economies.

Alberta’s most significant oilfield at that time, in Turner Valley, was producing only one-quarter of the oil requirements for the province. While it was not known if there were any other conventional oil deposits in the province, the size, location and potential of the oil sands resource was obvious. Perhaps the time had come to tap this resource. By the end of the 1920s, previously hypothetical oil sands processing methods were being put to the test.

During the Great Depression—the Dirty Thirties—entrepreneurs struggled to raise capital to support oil sands developments. Hopes of increased investment were initially crushed when World War II broke out in 1939, drawing

men, materials and money away from the oil sands. After several years of conflict, however, the Canadian government, and then the Government of Alberta, became directly involved in developing the oil sands as a possible answer to the energy demands of the war effort. World War II ended in 1945 without the benefit of any oil from the oil sands. By 1949, the Alberta government had completed a working separation plant, but newly-discovered conventional oil reserves in the province made the oil sands a second choice for investors.

The potential of the oil sands may have been unlocked, but it would be many years before the resource was tapped.