Post-war Period: 1946-1980s

The immediate post-war period saw an ownership change for the Turner Valley gas plant and a focus on developing new products. In 1948, Imperial Oil sold its interest in Royalite to Dominion Securities, which sold a majority stake in Royalite to Montreal’s Bronfman family, one of Canada’s most well-known industrial developers. The Bronfmans took an active role in managing the company. They worked directly with Ottawa and Royalite management to further develop the Turner Valley plant through the adoption and installation of new technology and processes to begin producing propane and sulfur.

Propane had first been produced in Turner Valley by James Barber, an American engineer who had come to Turner Valley in 1938. Barber had knowledge of the oil and gas industry from his time working in the Colorado oil fields. He recognized that the gas the Turner Valley plant was flaring contained

both ethane and propane. In 1948, he created Western Propane to produce and market propane. Barber built a plant on the Sheep River half a mile from the Royalite Turner Valley gas plant. To produce propane from the gas, he used a Girbotol sweetening unit and a refrigeration-fractionation plant, which was unique as refrigeration had never been used by a Canadian firm to extract natural gas products.

Although the propane produced by Western Propane was a 99% pure product, market demand was not as great as Barber had anticipated, so, in July 1952, he sold Western Propane to Royalite. In August, Royalite took the Western Propane plant and equipment apart and reassembled it at the Turner Valley plant, starting production in October. Commonly known as “bottled gas,” propane found a ready market in the 1950s onwards.

Increasing industrial, domestic and recreational uses made propane an increasingly lucrative product for Royalite, but it was the production of sulfur that presented the most potential for the company. Sulfur is a versatile element with many industrial uses. Large quantities are used to make sulfuric acid, an essential component in the manufacture of fertilizers. Sulfur and its derivatives are also used in the production of pulp and paper, batteries, detergents, fungicides and pesticides, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and in water treatment processes.

In the early 1950s, Royalite entered into a partnership with engineering firm Foster Wheeling Ltd. to design and install equipment that would extract sulfur from the hydrogen sulfide in much of Turner Valley’s natural gas. The equipment was installed, and the process of extracting sulfur, dubbed Operation Brimstone, began in July 1952. The sulfur was transported by truck to Okotoks, where it was loaded on trains and shipped throughout Canada.

The additions of the propane and sulfur equipment were the last major changes

to occur at the gas plant. Over the next thirty to forty years, minor changes occurred as older equipment was upgraded and replaced. A new fractionation plant was added in 1972 to produce gasoline, but the nature and direction of Alberta’s oil and gas industry had changed. The discovery of vast reserves of conventional oil at Leduc in 1947 and Redwater in 1948 drew the industry’s attention northward, and the Turner Valley oil and gas field and the plant itself declined in significance to the overall sector.

Furthermore, production from the Turner Valley field was steadily declining as a result of depressurization caused by years of wasteful gas flaring. Ownership of the plant changed again when it was purchased by British American (later Gulf Oil) in 1962 and finally by Western Decalta in 1977. Western Decalta found itself facing declining production and increasing expenses to maintain and upgrade the plant. Seeing continued operations as no longer feasible or economical, Western Decalta decommissioned the Turner Valley gas plant in 1985.