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Washing Out the Sand

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Fort McMurray oil sands

But it was clearly Ells who was first in the field aggressively pursuing opportunities for commercial development of the oil sands. Max Ball, possibly the most widely known petroleum authority in mid-20th centu­ry and a major figure in development of the oil sands, in 1950 described Ells as "the father of the Alberta bituminous sands research and devel­opment." Ball credited Ells with having made the first "systematic study of the deposits," the first "comprehensive maps of the area in which they lie," the "first systematic study of methods for separating the bitu­men from the sands," and the first to have "developed and demonstrat­ed the principle of hot water separation."13

That description of Ells could not have sat well with Dr. Karl Adolf Clark, who has also been called the father of oil sands development, hav­ing spent nearly 40 years improving hot water flotation technology. Clark began his studies in 1920, seven years after Ells had first entered the field, working for the newly formed Alberta Research Council. At first, "in the spring of 1917, Ells had happily shared information about the oil sands with the University of Alberta," oil sands historian Barry Glen Ferguson claims.14 But three years later, "Ells was co-operative nei­ther with the University nor with its offshoot, the Research Council of Alberta." As for the Alberta scientists, as well as other business and gov­ernment officials, they thought "Ells was a man to be avoided," and they did not want to work with him. Perhaps there was an element of profes­sional rivalry. Perhaps it was personality conflicts. There might have been an element of federal-provincial tension: Ells represented the fed­eral government working on Alberta's resources; it would hardly seem surprising if Alberta placed greater emphasis on the efforts of its own scientists. Whatever the cause, it did not help that in his first report, a year after he started his studies, Clark claimed that he had found a "new method"— hot water flotation — to extract the bitumen, without any ref­erence to the work of Hoffmann, Ells or others. Ferguson archly suggests that Clark did not want to share any credit, that he "was ignoring the cumulative nature of his technique for reasons that seem unlikely to yield documented explanation."15 Ells, too, was probably guilty of the same thing.

Regardless of these relations, no one spent more time nor greater effort in developing the hot water flotation process than Clark. Working with $300 worth of test equipment, Clark seemed confident that he had solved the problems almost immediately. Barely a year after his appointment, Clark confided to the university's president, Henry Marshall Tory, that "something definite has been accomplished and a very considerable glim­mer of daylight let through the problem."16 Later the same year, he announced, "Most of the purely inventive work has now been done. There remains to be accomplished the practical application of the new methods to the production of bitumen from the tar sands. This means . . . commercial production.”17

But it wasn't quite that easy nor quick. None of Clark's projects nor oth­ers he was associated with resulted in sustained commercial oil sands pro­duction until the GCOS plant began producing 46 years later.

NOTES:

  1. G. Christian Hoffman, Chemical Contributions to the Geology of Canada, Geological Survey of Canada, Ottawa. Cited by De Mille in Oil in Canada West.
  2. Sidney Ells, Preliminary Report on the Bituminous Sands of Northern Alberta, Mines Branch Report 281 (Ottawa: Department of Mines, 1914). See also by Ells, Recollections of the Development of the Athabasca Oil Sands (Ottawa: Department of Mines and Technical Surveys, 1962).
  3. Ells, Recollections of the Development of the Athabasca Oil Sands.
  4. Barry Glen Ferguson, Athabasca Oil Sands: Northern Resource E xploration, 1875 – 1951. (Edmonton: Alberta Culture / Canadian Plains Research Centre, 1985)
  5. Ells, Recollections of the Development of the Athabasca Oil Sands.
  6. Ferguson, Athabasca Oil Sands: Northern Resource Exploration, 1875 – 1951.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid.
  9. Ibid.

From The Great Canadian Oil Patch, pgs. 335 to 339, reprinted with kind permission of JuneWarren Publishing and Mr. Earle Gray
 

 
 
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