Program Item Details
TITLE: Mary Clark Sheppard, Author of "Oilsands Scientist"
SUBJECT: #6 Dr. Karl Clark: Oil Sands Scientist
SYNOPSIS: At 74, Mary Clark Sheppard is writing a second book about her father's scientific work on the Athabasca oilsands, this one covering the period 1949 to 1965 . In the 1920's, Dr. Karl Clark discovered how to separate oil from the oilsands. But his work on developing the technology to commercialize this vast resource was interrupted when the Research Council of Alberta was abruptly shutdown in 1932. In 1942 funding was restored and once again Clark had a lab in which to conduct his scientific research. The success of the Bitumount pilot plant in 1949 led to an economic feasibility study in 1950 and the all important Oilsands Symposium in Sept of 1951. Then in 1966, nine months after Karl Clark died, Great Canadian Oilsands opened the first commercial oilsands plant.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Intro: 1942 marked a turning point for Dr. Karl Clark. After a ten year hiatus during the Depression, the Research Council of Alberta was revived. Once again Clark had a lab and an assistant at his disposal and he could continue his work on the Athabasca oil sands. He spent the next three years doing more refined analysis on the oil sands and then as his daughter, Mary Clark Sheppard, relates he was ready to try his hand at another pilot plant. This eventually reunited him with his old research colleague, Sid Blair.
Mary Clark Sheppard
MCS: First of all the Alberta government built a plant. It was started in 1946 and it operated in the summer of 1949. That was at Bitumount. That’s about sixty miles downstream from Fort McMurray. And the reason that they chose Bitumount was that there was a very good bit of sand there that was known to work easily and this man, Bob Fitzsimmons, who had worked it as a commercial thing and who had sold it. There was a docking facility there and so they just used that site. So then they built and operated in the plant in 1949 and it operated very successfully. There were problems but that was alright.
And then so the question was, ‘what do we do now’. There was no point in just going on operating this plant at great expense. The thing to do was you had a lot data now and the next thing was in the economic feasibility. So, who should do that? Well, anyway, in the end it was decided that Sid Blair was the person to do it. He was in Toronto. He was now an independent professional consulting engineering, had a huge amount of experience about oil and all sorts of things. He was a very able person and so they used universal products and the federal government Mines Branch were brought in and Alberta Research Council. And Sid coordinated and wrote-up the report and that was published in December, 1950. And, his findings were that it was possible to mine and separate and upgrade and pipe the oil to Edmonton and to Sarnia for 40¢ less than the market price.
So, as he said, it was in the realm of possibility that he could commercially develop this work. So, anyway, then they said, ‘well, now what’. Well, the next step would be have a symposium. They had to get together all the information there was about this oil sands and have a big convention, symposium they called it, and people came from all over. I’ve got the proceedings, they’re over there, and with the list of all the people that came. I mean, there were about 150, I think. People came from all over North America and elsewhere and it lasted two or three days and they had papers on all aspects of this–mining, separation and geology, and upgrading, and all these things. And it was very prestigious. Then they took everybody up to Fort McMurray that wanted to go to Bitumount. About 100 people went up. They flew them all up. It was quite a logistical operation. So that was the symposium and that happened in September of ‘51.
And then it was just a matter of waiting but then all through the 50s the oil companies all were listening and they were all interested. They were sending 400 pounds of oil sands to this company and 100 pounds of straight oil to this company and all over the place. They were sending oil samples. Oh, 1956, of course, was the big year because that’s when the Suez crisis happened. And even in ‘52 when Mossadegh in Iran. We were still calling it Persia then erroneously. He began flexing his muscles because the British had big oil concessions in Persia dating back to the British Empire days. That was the first sign that things weren’t going to be quite as good. So that really began to stir the oil companies and my father used to say he was sure that they were all interested and they all knew that oil sands were going to be a big thing in the future but they all hoped it wouldn’t happen for awhile. They kept saying ‘not yet please, not yet please’. And eventually it became clear that ‘yes you know’ they could look down the road and it was time to start doing this.
And then Great Canadian and then there was another company called City Services and they were the two. The Great Canadian applied first to the Conservation Board for an application to develop and they beat City Service out a bit to actually start commercial development. But, you know, there were big hearings and you know it was and then getting the financing together and then they had to build a pilot plant. So they both, GCOS and City Service, did this. GCOS got permission to build the first plant which they opened in 1967 which was unfortunately just nine months after my father died.
CC: HOW DID YOUR FATHER FEEL ABOUT SEEING HIS WORK FINALLY COME TO THE COMMERCIALIZATION STAGE?
MCS: Well, of course, I’m sure he was, I mean, he was very happy to see that it had achieved what he had been called to do in the first place. And that was very gratifying and, of course, he did consult a lot with GCOS. They made a lot of use out of him. But as I said in Oil Sands Scientist the poignant bit is that when he was in England, not long before he died, he said to me, ‘oh, I just didn’t like it at all. I don’t ever want to go up again.’ Because seeing all the burning and slashing, clearing all that overburden was quite sad for him because he loved the north country. He was a great camper. He was a professional camper as the geological survey people were. And the other thing that happened is that I went up to Bitumount in 1984 and what fascinated me was to see all the trees that had grown up out of this tar sand. Because they had stripped the overburden off for the Bitumount plant, they had to build a road up from the river docks down to up above where the plant was and they had to dig out all this tar sand. They mined it and all over the place there were trees.
Now this would be, well this was ‘84, so this was forty-four years after it had done. So anyway all these trees were growing up and so I think my father wouldn’t be heartbroken any more but he certainly was at the time.
CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH MARY.
MCS: Well thank you.
Mary Clark Sheppard is the daughter of Dr. Karl Clark. Mary is working on a second book about her father’s research into oil sands production. It will cover the period from 1949 to 1965.